GIFT   OF 


IN  THE  SERVICE  OF 
THE  KING 

A   PARSON'S   STORY 


BY 

JOSEPH    B.  DUNN 


* 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 
NEW  YORK  AND   LONDON 

ttbe  ftnicfterbocfter  fcress 
1915 


COPYRIGHT,  1915 

BY 
JOSEPH   B.  DUNN 


•Cbe  fmfcfcerbocfeer  press,  flew  ffiorft 


OVERTURE 

IT  is  not  infrequent  in  splendid  book  shops  to 
see  people  of  undecided  minds  loitering  about  idly 
turning  the  pages  of  first  one  volume  and  then 
another,  endeavouring  through  some  chance  para- 
graph to  make  a  happy  choice. 

May  their  eyes  happen  upon  my  brief  but 
enthusiastic  appreciation  of  "In  the  Service  of  the 
King. ' '  Nothing  can  be  more  thrilling  or  splendidly 
optimistic  than  the  author's  own  prefatory  word, 
but  it  is  not  comprehensive  enough  of  qualities  so 
varied  as  to  appeal  to  every  reader — Sinner,  Saint, 
or  Pharisee. 

Dr.  Dunn  has  a  rich,  straightforward,  broad 
understanding  of  that  divine  illuminating  Sermon 
on  the  Mount.  Those  appealing  words  have  so 
penetrated  his  heart,  that  he  loves  his  brother — 
even  his  lost  and  outcast  brother — as  himself. 

iii 


304006 


IV 


Overture 


And  his  experiences  are  told  with  simplicity,  tender- 
ness, hopefulness,  and — most  wonderful  of  all — with 
the  salt  of  humour.  They  bring  to  memory  a  long 
ago  decorous  advertisement  in  the  London  Times: 

"  Wanted,  by  an  invalid  lady,  a  housekeeper  ; 
must  be  a  good  Church  woman,  to  take  entire 
charge  of  house  and  four  servants.  A  cheerful 
Christian,  if  possible." 

Evidently,  the  poor  lady  had  suffered  under  a 
succession  of  depressing,  gloomy,  sour-visaged, 
Christian  housekeepers,  who  had  made  life  unbear- 
able for  the  four  servants,  and  added  to  her  own 
weariness.  Her  hope  was  small  of  finding  a 
Christian  with  a  smiling  countenance.  That  gentle 
"  if  possible  "  covered  much  tribulation  of  spirit. 
We  are  told  that  God  loves  a  cheerful  giver,  and 
we  are  certain  He  loves  a  cheerful  Christian  even 
more.  Dr.  Dunn  strengthens  this  certainty 
through  his  own  joyous  spiritual  and  physical  life. 
He  makes  poverty  bearable,  love  far-reaching, 
and  forgiveness  possible.  His  religion  is  sincere, 
patient,  convincing,  and  friendly, — the  sort  of  faith 
that  we  all  look  for  in  our  directors  and  pastors, 
but  rarely  find.  His  belief  in  the  goodness  of 
human  nature  is  so  abiding  and  indestructible  that 
he  inspires  the  same  feeling  in  his  reader,  whom  he 
approaches  with  such  candour  and  enthusiasm  as 


Overture  v 

to  convert  him  into  an  ally.  And  to  be  on  the 
side  of  the  Angels,  even  in  the  scant  hours  spent 
in  reading  a  book,  is  an  edifying  and  beautiful 
experience. 


NEW  YORK, 
December  it  1914. 


PREFATORY  WORD 

THE  history  of  the  jungle  is  the  record  of  a 
never-ending  tragedy.  The  story  of  the  beast  is 
ever  the  story  of  surrender  to  environment.  The 
beast  conforms  to  the  pressure  of  his  surroundings 
till  he  reaches  the  limit  of  his  power  to  conform, 
then  he  perishes.  He  neither  is  able,  nor  does  he 
try  to  conquer  conditions.  The  king-killer  dies 
of  starvation  at  last.  The  survival  of  the  fittest 
is  only  a  scene  in  the  earlier  stages  of  the  drama. 
The  end  is  ever  the  same,  failure,  surrender,  death. 
The  philosophers  who  proclaim  that  they  have 
discovered  the  law  of  life  in  the  jungle,  and  point 
to  the  tiger's  tooth  and  claw  as  the  evidence  of 
the  survival  of  the  fittest,  are  trumpeters  of  doom, 
and  preach  a  gospel  of  despair. 

The  story  of  man  is  the  record  of  a  struggle  to 
change  conditions,  to  overcome  the  pressure  of 
environment.  To  conform  is  to  die,  to  conquer 
is  to  live.  This  volume  is  the  story,  told  in  fire- 
side fashion,  of  one  who,  with  his  fellows,  has 
struggled  to  change  conditions.  At  a  certain  time 

•vii 


vili  Prefatory  Word 

in  that  struggle  there  came  to  him  with  all  the 
vividness  of  a  personal  revelation  the  truth  that  to 
be  a  Christian  meant  not  to  be  a  certain  kind  of 
man,  but  to  be  all  of  a  man.  Since  then,  awakened 
interest  has  ever  been  accompanied  by  the  dis- 
covery of  new  powers  of  appropriation,  and  every 
contact  with  what  men  call  a  necessary  evil  has 
stirred  his  soul  to  action  and  given  to  life  an  added 
zest  and  a  new  joy.  He  has  refused  to  concede 
Hell's  proprietary  right  to  set  the  mark  of  the 
Beast  on  any  man,  and  has  sought  to  find  the 
hidden  human  there.  What  men  call  human  is 
the  divine  in  man,  and  the  perfect  human  is 
the  revelation  of  Divinity.  He  whom  men  call 
Saviour,  calls  Himself  Son  of  Man. 

Some  time  ago  the  Editor  of  The  Churchman 
asked  the  writer  to  contribute  some  memories  to 
the  pages  of  his  journal.  This  story  had  its  be- 
ginning there.  Somehow  the  story  made  appeal 
to  men  and  women  so  far  apart  in  temperament 
and  outlook  that  the  writer  was  tempted  to  con- 
tinue it  in  the  same  vein,  in  the  hope  that  the 
intimate  speech  of  the  precious  things  of  life 
might  find  and  claim  as  kin  the  imperishable 

human  in  other  lives. 

J.  B.  DUNN. 

LYNCHBURG,  VA., 
Dec.  i,  1914. 


CONTENTS 

IN  COUNTRY  AND  VILLAGE  i 

THE  TOWN  MINISTRY  .         .         .  47 

THE  CITY  MINISTRY 78 

FIRESIDE  TALK 119 


In  the  Service  of  the  King 


IN  COUNTRY  AND  VILLAGE 
I 

SOME  critic  has  said  that  the  world  is  over-rich 
in  the  records  of  life's  successes,  that  everybody 
knows  the  psychology  of  success,  but  that  litera- 
ture is  actually  in  need  of  candid  autobiographies 
of  mediocrity.  Satiated  with  the  glare  of  bright 
colours,  the  reading  public  is  eager  for  a  drab 
literature.  The  tired  ear  longs  for  the  droning 
monotone  of  Martin  Tupper. 

These  reminiscences  will  appeal  to  tired  minds 
alone.  It  is  a  journey  through  a  flat  country. 
There  are  plenty  of  resting-places,  and  the  weary 
reader  is  not  called  upon  to  climb  the  hill  of  vision. 

Twenty  years  ago  a  young  student,  who  all  his 
life  long  had  been  fighting  shadows  under  the 
lamp,  was  sent  as  a  deacon  to  take  charge  of  a 
country  parish.  This  parish  was  fifty  miles  long 


tKe  SeirvicSe  of  tKe 


and  thirty-five  miles  wide.  Within  its  bounds 
were  five  churches.  The  living  wage  of  the 
labourer  was  $600.  He  rented  a  cottage,  pur- 
chased a  jumper  that  had  already  seen  long  ser- 
vice, and  bought  for  $28  at  a  street  auction  a 
small  nag  that  a  defeated  candidate  for  a  minor 
office  in  the  country  had  just  used  in  a  campaigning 
tour.  The  new  owner  of  this  old  war  horse  of 
Democracy  comforted  himself  with  the  thought 
that  "the  race  is  not  to  the  swift/'  and  dubbed  his 
little  sorrel,  "Brer  Terrapin."  The  weapons  of 
his  warfare  were  stored  in  the  cottage.  A  won- 
derful arsenal,  indeed,  it  seemed  to  the  infrequent 
visitor,  a  thousand  old  volumes,  most  of  which 
had  been  picked  up  in  second-hand  shops  in 
Washington  and  Boston,  and  a  few  rare  ones  from 
the  shelves  of  a  dingy  old  shop  in  London. 

The  mental  equipment  of  the  young  teacher 
he  soon  found  to  be  hopelessly  inadequate.  His 
thousand  words  of  Hebrew,  kept  together  till  the 
ordeal  of  the  chaplain's  inquisition  was  passed 
by  a  skilfully  devised  system  of  mnemonics,  were 
straying  away  through  the  broken  gaps  of  memory, 
till  at  last  one  word  alone  answered  to  the  call  of 
the  will.  And  that  one  always  brought  a  blush 
of  shame,  for  it  argued  an  unregenerate  spirit. 
It  was  the  Hebrew  word  for  "tent."  Back  in  the 


In  Country  and  Village  3 

recesses  of  his  mind  lay  the  dead  languages  in 
mortis  rigore.  Science  and  philosophy,  on  which 
he  had  spent  years  of  toil,  had  passed  through  the 
mill  of  college  examinations  and  were  now  but  a 
shapeless  mass  of  pulp.  Somewnere  among  his 
belongings  he  had  a  beautifully  engraved  bit  of 
parchment  certifying  that  he  had  finished  all 
these  things. 

The  most  vivid,  because  it  was  the  most  recent 
mental  impression  (for  had  he  not  just  studied 
these  things  in  order  to  answer  the  questions  of 
the  chaplains?)  was  the  catalogue  of  the  early 
Christian  heresies.  As  the  young  teacher  took 
stock  of  knowledge  ready  for  use,  he  found  in  the 
forefront  of  his  mind  a  large  and  varied  assort- 
ment of  refutations.  He  was  prepared  to  meet 
higher  critics,  evolutionists,  pantheists,  and  every 
other  ic  and  ist  known  to  the  masters  of  foil  in 
the  Theological  Seminary.  He  was  eager  for  the 
combat,  but  none  of  these  antagonists  were  in 
sight.  The  problems  before  him  were  all  problems 
of  life  and  not  of  philosophy.  How  was  he  to 
meet  listless  indifference,  ignorant  and  often  bitter 
provincialism,  poverty  of  thought,  and  an  aspira- 
tion that  never  soared  above  creature  comforts  or 
frivolous  pleasure,  that  was  dissipation  only  in  the 
sense  that  it  was  waste  of  time  and  opportunity? 


4  In  tHe  Service  of  tKe  King 

Though  the  young  deacon  found  that  his  store 
of  knowledge,  like  the  provisions  of  the  first  colon- 
ists, had  spoiled  in  the  hold,  still  he  felt  that  he 
was  not  without  resource,  for  he  had  brought 
with  him  from  the  seminary  two  serviceable 
maxims.  They  were  written  large  in  his  note- 
book, and  accepted  by  him  as  the  final  expression 
of  wisdom  from  the  lips  of  the  Professor  of  Homi- 
letics  and  Pastoral  Theology.  The  maxims  were: 
"Do  not  attempt  to  preach  theology;  let  your 
sermons  be  practical/'  and  "Do  not  waste  five- 
dollar  time  on  a  five-cent  job." 

Some  English  historian  refers  to  the  American 
Revolution  as  a  revolt  of  the  colonists  which 
England  was  not  able  to  repress  on  account  of  the 
extent  of  territory  over  which  the  revolt  spread. 
Washington  is  not  mentioned.  The  victor  over 
England  was  extent  of  territory. 

The  deacon  was  not  called  upon  to  quell  a 
revolt,  but  he  learned  to  know  how  formidable  an 
antagonist  extent  of  territory  could  be. 

To  preach  practical  sermons  to  a  people  whom 
he  hardly  knew — for  many  of  them  he  saw  only  on 
one  Sunday  in  the  month — and  to  economize  time 
when  it  took  two  days  to  drive  across  his  parish, 
he  soon  found  to  be  equally  impossible  tasks. 
Former  deacons  had  been  preaching  practical 


In  Country  and  "Village  5 

sermons,  and  from  earliest  memory  these  people 
had  been  told  the  things  they  must  not  do.  All 
sense  of  spiritual  and  ethical  perspective  had  been 
destroyed  in  them.  They  were  living  under  the 
Code  Leviticus.  The  Decalogue  had  been  elon- 
gated till  the  list  of  forbidden  things  was  inter- 
minable. The  life  of  the  spirit  had  ceased  to  be 
being;  it  consisted  in  abstaining.  In  the  catalogue 
of  sins,  card-playing  and  dancing  were  cheek  by 
jowl  with  murder,  arson,  and  theft,  and,  like 
Frederick's  crack  regiment,  everyone  in  line  was 
a  giant,  A  sermon  was  judged  somewhat  as  the 
old  colored  mammy  tests  medicine,  "The  bitterer 
the  taste  the  quicker  the  cure."  The  Bible  was 
a  great  collection  of  proof -texts,  to  be  used  largely 
for  argumentative  purposes.  Nothing  gave  quite 
as  much  delight  as  the  refutation  of  some  favourite 
tenet  of  another  church,  and  the  sermon  was 
deemed  especially  appropriate  if  some  of  the 
people  who  held  these  tenets  happened  to  be  in 
church  that  day. 

The  deacon  never  tried  to  summarize  the  lessons 
learned  in  that  first  year,  but  they  must  have  been 
something  like  this:  If  a  minister  is  to  be  of  any 
lasting  benefit  to  his  people  he  must  first  of  all 
see  to  their  spiritual  education.  He  must  teach 
them  to  use  their  own  conscience  and  not  be 


6  In  tHe  Service  of  tHe  King 

obliged  to  wait  for  Sunday  to  come  in  order  to  find 
out  what  is  wrong.  He  must  teach  principles 
and  not  precepts.  He  must  share  with  his  people, 
as  the  mother-bird  shares  her  food  with  her  brood, 
every  morsel  of  new  knowledge  of  God  that  he 
acquires.  He  must,  in  fact,  be  always  preaching 
theology,  in  season  and  out  of  season,  in  the  pulpit, 
during  the  friendly  visit,  and  in  the  sick-room.  He 
must  help  his  people  to  know  God.  The  other 
lesson  was  only  partly  learned  that  year,  but  the 
passing  years  have  made  it  very  plain.  The 
lesson  is  this:  there  are  very  few  five-cent  jobs  in 
a  village  ministry.  If  the  village  parson  is  to  be 
identified  with  the  life  of  the  little  community, 
then  every  hour  spent  with  the  waiting  crowd  in 
the  post-office  or  in  the  drug  store  on  a  rainy  day 
is  time  put  to  the  very  best  use.  If  he  is  a  religious 
prig  he  will  scatter  those  crowds  into  the  street, 
even  if  it  be  raining  outside;  but  if  he  be  a  man 
with  the  conscious  purpose  in  his  life  of  trying  to 
make  effective  the  best  that  is  in  men,  then  intim- 
ate acquaintanceship  with  many  minds  and  many 
moods  of  men  is  necessary.  Looking  back  over 
those  first  days,  in  which  he  learned  far  more 
•  from  his  people  than  he  was  able  to  teach  them, 
the  village  parson  realizes  that  perhaps  his  best 
work  for  God  and  man  was  done  when  he  sat  with 


In  Country  and  Village  7 

a  crowd  around  the  stove  in  some  store,  and  by 
argument  and  anecdote  forced  some  listless  mind 
to  grapple  again  with  the  stern  problem  of  right 
thinking  and  right  living. 

At  night  in  the  cottage  rectory,  which  the 
parson  called  "the  smoke-house,"  being  a  friend 
of  the  pipe,  when  he  got  among  his  books  he  tried 
to  make  the  knowledge  of  his  people's  needs  the 
criterion  of  his  choice  in  reading.  The  volumes 
on  his  shelves  soon  ceased  to  be  mere  symbols. 
Many  a  spare  hour  was  spent  in  mastering  the 
table  of  contents  in  a  book  not  to  be  read  for 
months  perhaps.  His  young  brain  was  seething 
with  questions,  and  one  by  one  he  asked  of  the 
books  about  him :  "  Can  you  answer  my  questions?" 
To  know  God — that  was  his  quest.  This  was  his 
people's  need  and  it  was  his  too.  As  he  turns  the 
pages  of  volumes  read  in  those  first  years,  the 
marks  of  the  explorer's  pick  are  everywhere. 
The  margins  are  black  with  comment,  approval, 
disclaimer,  crude  questionings,  and  here  and  there 
a  boyish  "Hurrah!"  when  some  rich  find  showed 
up. 

And  then  the  sermons !  How  well  he  remembers 
his  first  attempt  to  carry  out  the  suggestion  of 
some  friend  to  make  them  simpler  and  to  avoid  the 
use  of  unfamiliar  words!  First  every  Latin  and 


8  In  tKe  Service  of  tHe  King 

Greek  derivative  was  underscored  and  then  cut 
out.  Afterwards  came  the  weeding  out  of  all  the 
superlatives.  Then  every  adjective  was  ques- 
tioned, and  made  to  show  just  cause  why  it  should 
not  be  expelled.  He  preached  that  sermon.  It 
was  a  theological  sermon,  and  a  little  tot,  a  chum 
of  his,  told  him  afterwards:  "I  understood  every 
word  you  said."  Of  course  the  child  did  not  un- 
derstand; but  the  language,  if  not  the  ideas,  was 
within  the  circle  of  his  experience.  The  experi- 
ment proved  so  interesting  that  he  took  a  volume 
of  Caird's  sermons — sermons  rich  in  thought  and 
suggestions,  but  clothed  in  technical  and  classic 
language — and  deliberately  wrote  Saxon  para- 
phrases of  them.  The  paraphrase  reduced  their 
compass  more  than  one-half;  and  although  the 
shading  of  thought  and  much  of  the  linguistic 
beauty  were  done  away,  he  believed  then  and  now 
believes  that  their  effectiveness  was  greatly 
increased. 

The  Saxon  in  our  speech  represents  those  inti- 
mate and  elemental  things  which  the  conquering 
Norman  could  not  make  our  forefathers  give  up; 
and  village  and  country  preaching  deals  with 
intimate  and  elemental  things,  and  Saxon  speech 
is  the  direct  road  to  a  people's  understanding. 
Never  will  the  village  parson  forget  the  response 


In  Country  and  "Village  9 

to  a  question  put  to  the  infant  class  in  the  Sun- 
day-school. He  gathered  the  little  ones  about 
him  and  asked:  "What  kin  is  God  to  you,  and 
what  kin  are  you  to  God?"  More  than  one 
mother  told  him  afterwards  that  her  child  had 
come  home  with  face  all  aglow  to  tell  her  the  fact, 
now  for  the  first  time  really  made  his  own:  "I  am 
God's  child. "  That  word  kin  had  unlocked  the 
door  of  heaven  for  them. 

It  may  be  a  case  of  arrested  development,  but 
the  boy's  point  of  view  still  comes  easy  to  him ; 
and  the  dreams  of  those  days  of  callow  youth  still 
retain  their  vividness,  though  now  the  sun  is 
directly  overhead  and  the  noontime  glare  reveals 
the  fact  that  the  grass  is  not  quite  green  after 
all,  for  purple  and  yellow,  earnest  of  decay  and 
death,  can  be  seen  even  in  the  growing  plant.  He 
wishes  some  facile  pencil  would  sketch  the  oft- 
repeated  tragedy  of  the  diaconate. 

The  young  soldier  of  the  King,  fresh  from  the 
drill-room,  eager  for  the  fray,  and  the  God  within 
him — for  to  him  at  least  that  is  what  enthusiasm 
means — stirring  his  soul  to  action,  is  detailed  for 
his  first  service.  He  is  fitted  by  temperament  and 
training  to  take  his  place  in  line  and  spend  his 
strength  in  some  splendid  charge.  The  one  thing 
he  is  not  fitted  for  is  to  conduct  a  siege,  and  yet 


IO  In  tKe  Service  of  tHe  Ring; 

this  is  the  work  for  which  he  is  often  appointed. 
He  is  sent  to  some  parish  in  an  advanced  stage 
of  disintegration.  He  is  appointed  the  counsellor 
of  the  aged  and  the  comforter  of  the  disheartened. 
He  is  ignorant  of  the  very  vernacular  of  his  dis- 
trict and  there  is  none  near  at  hand  to  teach  him. 
Small  wonder  that  he  acquires  an  artificial  tone, 
and  learns  to  look  not  at,  but  beyond,  his  present 
task. 

If  these  recollections  are  to  be  of  any  value  they 
must  be  candid,  and  a  change  of  pronouns  clothes 
egotism  itself  with  the  borrowed  garb  of  modesty. 
When  the  deacon  looked  at  his  first  task,  his  heart 
sank  within  him.  It  was  not  that  his  feelings 
were  those  of  Mulholland  when  God  sent  him 
back  to  the  cattle-ship  to  preach  His  Word : 

"I  didn't  want  to  do  it,  for  I  knew  what  I  should 

get, 
An*  I  wanted  to  preach  religion,  handsome  an*  out  of 

the  wet, 
But  the  Word  of  the  Lord  were  lain  on  me  an*  I  done 

what  I  was  set." 

It  was  not  that  he  wanted  to  do  it,  "handsome 
an'  out  of  the  wet."  The  very  difficulties  of  the 
cattle-ship  or  the  mining  camp  would  each  have 
suggested  hardship  enough  to  make  the  young  colt 
lift  his  head  to  take  the  hill  in  a  gallop.  It  was 


In  Co-untry  and  Village  II 

the  absence  of  the  heroic  that  sapped  the  young 
deacon's  energy.  The  qualities  that  fitted  him 
for  some  other  task  he  found  here  an  actual  hin- 
drance. The  blessed  privilege  of  youth  was  a 
constant  handicap.  Patient  wisdom  that  had 
winnowed  the  chaff  of  youthful  haste  was  what 
was  needed.  The  parish  needed  the  wise  coun- 
sellor whose  faith  was  trained  by  long  experience 
to  count  even  honest  failure  a  large  success.  The 
parish  had  an  enthusiastic  boy  whose  spirit  fretted 
under  the  utter  hopelessness  of  the  task  set  him. 
How  could  he  minister  to  spiritless  old  age,  whose 
life  had  been  broken  at  the  wheel  and  who  was 
forced  to  live  in  the  shadow  of  defeat,  when  his 
youth  was  vibrant  with  hope  of  masteries  to  be 
attained? 

That  he  did  not  utterly  fail,  and  saved  the 
Irish  in  him  for  service  elsewhere,  he  ascribes  to 
two  facts.  His  small  stipend  forced  him  to  be  a 
stay-at-home  in  body,  but  when  the  day's  task 
was  done  he  wandered  far  afield  in  thought  and 
in  the  best  of  company. 

On  one  of  these  mental  excursions,  with  dear 
old  Gulliver  for  guide,  he  visited  the  Island  of 
Laputa,  and  in  the  laboratory  of  the  famous 
Academy  of  Lagoda  he  saw  a  great  inventor  at 
his  work.  The  man  was  "of  meagre  aspect, 


12  In  tKe  Service  of  tKe  King 

with  sooty  hands  and  face,  his  hair  and  beard  long, 
ragged,  and  singed  in  several  places."  But  if  his 
outer  form  was  mean,  his  gift  to  men.was  radiant. 
He  had  hit  upon  a  device  for  extracting  sunshine 
from  cucumbers.  This  sunshine  was  then  stored 
away  in  bottles  to  be  used  in  the  home  on  dark 
days  to  light  the  house. 

In  that  hour,  as  he  watched  the  old  man  at  his 
work,  the  deacon  began  to  find  himself.  Dimly 
outlined  at  first,  but  gradually  defining  itself,  his 
mission  became  clear.  He  would  be  the  agent  of 
the  great  inventor,  a  dispenser  of  bottled  sunshine. 

The  young  deacon  pondered  the  step  well,  till 
the  whimsical  fancy  born  under  the  lamp  became 
a  fixed  purpose.  He  could  not  take  the  place  by 
siege.  He  could  not  bridge  the  moat  of  separating 
years.  He  could  not  scale  the  barriers  built  of 
broken  hopes  and  cemented  with  tears.  Age  and 
poverty  and  despair  were  weapons  too  strong  for 
him  to  contend  with.  An  old  proverb,  never 
before  put  to  such  use,  perhaps,  came  to  his  mind : 
"He  who  laughs  disarms  himself."  The  deacon 
set  out  to  make  his  people  laugh.  Counting  the 
cost,  he  deliberately  donned  the  motley.  From 
house  to  house  through  the  wide  extent  of  his 
country  parish  the  deacon,  in  his  jumper  drawn 
by  "Brer  Terrapin,"  went  hawking  his  curious 


In  Country  and  Village  13 

wares.  Old  college  jests,  the  rude  humour  of  the 
campus,  the  homely  commonplace  of  daily  life, 
decked  in  strange  trappings  of  verse  and  doggerel; 
solemn  accusation  of  coquetry  brought  against 
silent  and  lachrymose  old  ladies  of  seventy ;  frivol- 
ity laid  to  the  score  of  embittered  and  critical  old 
gentlemen;  the  terrible  tragedy  of  the  absent- 
minded  fat  lady,  Miss  Mollie  Muggins,  who, 
instead  of  a  pill,  swallowed  a  lighted  candle,  and 
the  dire  consequences  of  her  mistake.  Such  and 
such  like  were  the  topics  of  his  pastoral  minis- 
trations. 

With  a  persistency  that  even  now  he  feels  a 
pride  in,  he  determined  never  to  desert  till  he 
could  say  that  he  had  heard  a  laugh  from  every 
one  of  his  people.  He  found  out  then  that  the 
logic  in  a  jest  is  more  insistent  in  its  convincing 
power  than  even  the  rhetorician's  suppressed 
conclusion.  Whatever  else  he  may  have  left 
undone,  the  deacon  knows  that  in  those  first  days 
he  taught  to  many  a  sad  heart  the  long-forgotten 
trick  of  laughter.  The  laugh  unlocked  the  brighter 
memories  of  their  far-off  youth  and  they  paid  him 
for  their  laugh  in  love.  Love  levels  the  barriers 
of  age,  and  though  the  passing  years  have  swept 
them  far  apart,  the  deacon  counts  the  friends  of 
those  days  as  among  the  great  prizes  of  life.  He 


14     In  tKe  Service  of  tHe  Ring 

dare  not  gainsay  the  wise  man's  words  that  the 
" heart  of  fools  is  in  the  house  of  mirth";  but  ex- 
perience gives  him  courage  to  insist  that  when  the 
sunshine  is  unbottled  in  the  house  of  desolation  it 
discovers  many  a  heart  of  gold  that  was  near  to 
perishing  in  the  shadow. 

The  deacon  has  never  known  the  delectable 
tinkle  of  titularity,  nor  been  tempted  to  watch  for 
the  glint  of  tinsel  compliment  which  is  the  tribute 
that  eloquence  exacts,  but  he  wears  upon  his  heart 
the  message  sent  from  a  friend  whose  struggles 
upward  he  watched  in  that  fledgling  time:  "We 
have  had  and  lost  many  ministers  since  you  went 
away,  but  you  at  least,  no  matter  where  you  are, 
still  belong  to  us."  But  above  all  the  rewards  of 
his  early  ministry  he  holds  the  experience  of  that 
Sunday,  when,  for  the  encouragement  of  the  truest- 
hearted  gentleman  he  ever  knew,  he  preached  a 
sermon.  This  was  a  man  who,  in  the  midst  of  a 
losing  fight  with  fortune,  fought  on  with  quivering 
lip  from  which  no  plaint  ever  came ;  whose  gracious 
courtesies  in  the  home,  whose  simple  services  of 
neighbourly  helpfulness,  and  whose  hatred  of  a 
lie  marked  him  as  a  man  after  God's  own  heart. 
The  sermon  was  on  Isaac,  the  commonplace  man; 
the  man  without  executive  ability,  the  unprogres- 
sive  son  of  a  masterful  father,  but  withal  a  good 


In  Country  and  Village  15 

neighbour,  a  good  husband,  and  one  who  found 
his  place  in  the  eleventh  chapter  of  Hebrews, 
God's  own  Westminster.  When  the  service  was 
over,  and  the  deacon  had  just  retired  to  the 
robing-room,  the  living  Isaac  of  the  parable  opened 
the  door,  and,  gowned  as  he  was,  the  deacon  found 
himself  lifted  from  his  feet  and  held  tight  in  the 
bear-like  hug  of  his  friend,  who,  after  he  had  set 
him  down,  left  without  a  word. 

But  all  was  not  plain  sailing.  The  ministry  of 
merriment  took  him  ever  into  the  shadow,  just 
as  the  healing  art  keeps  the  physician  ever  with 
the  sick.  With  many  of  his  people  he  found  the 
case  to  be  that  the  iron  had  entered  into  the  soul, 
and  that  to  attempt  to  draw  it  out  meant  that  the 
life-blood  would  come  too.  Better  they  should 
brood  in  sadness  than  open-eyed  and  with  all  the 
senses  awake  to  face  the  void  of  the  coming  years. 

With  aching  heart  he  wrought  the  spell  that 
made  the  laughter  come.  It  dulled  the  pain,  but 
the  soul's  resiliency  was  gone,  and  the  hands  long 
relaxed  could  never  get  their  grip  on  life  again. 
And  so  it  came  about  that  after  one  of  his  parish 
rounds,  the  deacon  reached  his  home,  spent  and 
disheartened.  He  flung  himself  into  a  chair,  and 
too  weary  even  to  set  going  the  fires  that  brought 
the  solace  of  the  pipe,  he  dropped  the  reins  of  the 


16          In  tKe  Service  of  tHe  King 

directing  will  and  let  the  tired  mind  pluck  the 
sere  grass  of  old  memories.  How  dull  and  dead 
the  once  keen  zest  of  study,  and  how  withered  on 
the  stalk  the  bright  flower  of  his  youthful  hopes! 
One  by  one  he  counted  the  years  of  preparation 
for  his  task.  He  saw  again  the  boy  haranguing  his 
playmates  from  the  cellar-cap.  He  smiled  as  he 
remembered  how  his  volubility  had  won  their 
praise.  The  steady  grind  of  the  course,  the  eager 
passion  of  his  study  at  the  seminary — how  mean- 
ingless they  seemed!  The  fragment  of  a  line  of 
Browning  came  to  him:  "Down  dark  lanes  that 
lead  no  whither."  He  had  found  his  way  into 
one  of  life's  blind-alleys,  and  was  doomed  to  perish 
there.  His  bitterness  was  just  as  poignant  as  if 
he  had  been  large  enough  of  soul  to  have  made  a 
large  failure,  for  he  had  measured  the  possibilities 
of  service  not  by  his  ability  to  achieve,  but  by 
his  hope. 


II 


YOUTH  has  no  philosophy  with  which  to  combat 
the  aching  sense  of  failure.  It  has  not  yet  learned 
to  borrow  from  time's  banker,  the  future,  the 
means  to  tide  it  over  its  present  distress.  It  has 
failed,  and  there's  an  end  of  all  things.  Of  course 
it  lays  the  blame  on  its  environment,  and  cries 
out  against  the  power  that  beats  it  down.  At 
least  such  was  this  young  deacon's  state  of  mind 
as  in  mockery  of  self  he  hummed  Kipling's  ditty: 

"  A  great  and  glorious  thing  it  is 

To  learn  for  seven  years  or  so 
The  Lord  knows  what  of  that  or  this 

Ere  reckoned  fit  to  face  the  foe — 
The  flying  bullet  down  the  Pass 
That  whistles  clear,  'All  flesh  is  grass.'" 

As  the  deacon  moved  restlessly  in  his  chair,  his 
eye  rested  a  moment  upon  a  pipe-rack  on  the  wall. 
One  pipe  dyed  black  at  the  joints  of  its  root-stem 
and  with  half  its  bowl  hammered  away,  especially 
seemed  to  beckon  him.  With  a  laugh  the  deacon 
got  up  from  his  chair.  "The  sunshine  may  be 

a  17 


1 8  In  the  Service  of  tHe  King 

bottled  in  the  pipe,"  he  said,  "and  the  doctor 
must  take  his  own  medicine." 

Never  shipwrecked  sailor,  strapped  to  a  broken 
spar  and  drifting  on  unknown  seas,  felt  farther 
away  from  help  and  inspiration  than  did  the 
deacon  when  he  reached  out  for  his  pipe.  The 
pipe-rack  was  above  his  desk,  and  lying  open  on 
his  desk  was  a  life  of  the  Master.  The  book  had 
been  lying  there  since  he  put  it  down  days  before 
to  start  on  his  rounds.  Wholly  by  accident,  if 
you  will,  his  eye  caught  the  caption  of  the  chapter 
yet  unread.  It  was  "The  Galilean  Ministry." 
He  stared  at  the  words  printed  there  till  their 
meaning  seemed  to  burn  itself  into  his  brain. 
Then,  speaking  aloud  and  calling  himself  by  name, 
he  said:  "You  contemptible  little  puppy!"  The 
pipe  was  left  untouched,  and  with  vision  cleared 
by  the  flashlight  of  those  words  he  had  read,  the 
deacon  sat  down  to  think. 

The  Galilean  Ministry!  The  King  spending 
His  life  and  doing  His  work  in  Galilee  among  the 
rude  peasants  whose  quaint  rusticisms  made  the 
dwellers  in  the  capital  city  smile!  The  King 
making  His  home  in  Nazareth,  and  for  all  but  a 
few  months  of  His  matchless  life  left  to  hold  a  little 
post  up  in  the  hills  away  from  the  high-road !  The 
King  in  Galilee,  and  a  green  young  subaltern 


In  Country  and  Village  19 

whining  because  he  had  been  sent  for  a  little  while 
to  guard  the  outer  line  of  the  city  itself!  The 
King  in  Galilee,  separated  by  days  of  weary  foot 
travel  from  the  city  of  His  love,  and  the  young 
subaltern  whimpering  like  a  lost  child  because 
two  hours  of  comfortable  travel  on  train  stood 
between  him  and  the  centre  of  the  cleanest  and 
sweetest  resultant  of  that  civilization  He  gave  to 
the  world! 

It  was  as  if  the  King  Himself  had  spoken  to  him. 
Utterly  ashamed,  and  humbled,  as  if  he  had  read 
in  the  King's  face  sad  rebuke  of  his  disloyalty,  the 
deacon  set  his  teeth  to  face  the  facts.  He  had 
volunteered  to  serve  and  he  had  failed,  not  because 
the  task  was  too  hard,  but  because  of  his  own 
foolish  conceit  and  desire  to  do  his  work  before 
the  eyes  of  men. 

It  was  a  sad  house-cleaning,  but  it  was  thoroughly 
done,  and  when  the  last  hiding-place  had  been 
made  to  give  up  its  dirt,  and  the  sunlight  was 
pouring  in  at  every  window,  the  man  himself 
knew  that  somehow  the  sunlight  had  got  into  his 
own  soul. 

This  much  he  knows,  that  from  that  illuminating 
hour  the  restless  fretting  has  gone  out  of  his  life. 
When  the  prizes  of  life  are  given  and  none  comes 
his  way;  when  the  names  of  those  honoured  in 


2O          In  tHe  Service  of  tHe  King 

action  are  printed  in  the  gazette  and  his  name 
does  not  appear;  though  the  momentary  sense  of 
emptiness  may  come  as  aforetime,  it  does  not 
linger;  and  with  head  erect  he  goes  back  to  his 
task,  whispering,  "I  have  seen  the  King."  Some- 
times he  is  afraid  that  the  blessing  may  itself 
bring  a  blight,  for  the  memory  of  that  radiant 
hour  when  the  King  met  him  in  the  quiet  by-path 
of  life  tempts  him  to  think  lightly  of  the  service 
of  those  who  seek  Him  amidst  the  hurrying 
crowds  of  the  great  city. 

The  time  had  come  for  the  deacon  to  be  or- 
dained presbyter.  The  period  of  his  novitiate 
had  been  spent  far  from  the  eyes  of  his  superior 
officers  in  the  Church.  He  knew  few  of  the  clergy. 
A  large  district,  almost  a  whole  county,  had  been 
turned  over  to  him  when  he  was  a  mere  fledgling; 
and  for  a  year  he  had  fluttered  about,  passing 
through  every  stage  of  awkwardness  ere  he  found 
the  use  of  his  wings.  He  had  learned  in  books  a 
theory  of  the  Church.  He  cherished  in  his  imagi- 
nation the  ideal  of  the  nurturing  mother,  never 
forgetful  of  her  children,  no  matter  how  distant 
or  how  scattered;  but  he  found  it  difficult  to 
reconcile  his  ideal  with  the  facts.  But  for  the 
episcopal  visitation  and  the  quarterly  remittance 
from  the  Diocesan  Missionary  Society,  he  might 


\ 


In  Country  and  Village  21 

have  been  tempted  to  think  that  he  and  his  people 
were  unknown  or  forgotten  members  of  the  great 
family  of  God. 

If  the  deacon  in  the  missionary  districts  of  the 
diocese  could  have  brought  home  to  him  that  his 
task  is  one  committed  to  him  by  the  Church; 
that  loyalty  is  due  to  the  Church  as  well  as  to 
his  people;  that  the  Church  is  watching  every 
struggle  of  her  young  lieutenant  as  the  general 
government  watches  the  affairs  of  a  provincial 
district  which  it  has  committed  to  a  commissioned 
officer;  and  if  his  office  were  fully  recognized  as 
conferring  only  a  delegated  power,  and  it  were  an 
accepted  fact  that  the  Church  held  herself  respon- 
sible for  him  and  for  his  people,  then,  and  then 
only,  would  the  sense  of  loyalty  to  the  Church  be 
born  in  the  deacon.  How  can  loyalty  to  the 
Church,  which  he  knows  only  as  a  book  theory, 
be  a  motive  to  an  untried  youth  in  the  time  of  his 
inexperience?  An  episcopal  sermon  once  a  year 
and  a  quarterly  remittance  are  not  sufficient  for 
these  things. 

Never  will  the  parson,  as  we  shall  have  to  call 
him  now,  forget  the  first  time  that  he  was  called 
upon  to  give  some  account  of  the  field  in  which  he 
had  been  at  work  for  over  two  years.  He  was 
attending  a  missionary  gathering  held  in  a  city 


22  In  tKe  Service  of  tKe  King 

remote  from  his  home.  When  asked  what  was  the 
greatest  need  in  his  mission  field,  he  startled  his 
women  questioners  by  replying:  "A  missionary 
cook."  They  thought  him  a  jester  and  frowned 
disapproval.  Their  astonishment  was  not  les- 
sened when  he  produced  a  biscuit,  which  he  asked 
them  to  examine.  It  was  almost  green  in  colour. 
"This/*  he  said,  "is  the  food  of  my  people,  and  it 
is  not  Christian  food.  Over  half  the  women  in 
the  insane  asylum  in  a  neighbouring  State  are 
farmers'  wives,  suffering  from  melancholia;  and 
the  superintendent  assures  me  that  their  infirmity 
is  due  to  eating  bad  bread.  The  woman  who 
could  teach  my  people  how  to  make  decent  bread 
on  an  open  fire,  and  eradicate  a  pernicious  culinary 
heresy  known  as  'fry/  would  win  sainthood,  and 
her  grave  would  become  a  shrine.  But  that  wo- 
man would  have  to  be  endowed  with  apostolic 
common-sense,  and  must  have  received  the  unction 
of  tact;  for  the  saddest  feature  of  the  condition 
I  have  depicted  is  that  my  people  think  their  way 
the  best  way  in  the  world.  The  poor  woman  who 
made  that  biscuit  told  me  herself  that  she  was  a 
born  cook.  Her  husband  beats  her,  but  alas! 
finds  no  fault  with  her  cooking.  He  has  never 
known  any  better." 

Of  course  the  parson  was  not  understood.     One 


In  Country  and  Village  23 

lady,  whose  paper  was  crowded  out,  declared  with 
scarcely  concealed  scorn  that  the  missionary  society 
had  better  change  itself  into  a  cooking  school, 
and  another  suggested  that  they  should  get  some- 
one to  go  up  to  the  parson's  parish  and  deliver  a 
series  of  lectures  on  cooking. 

His  friends  joked  the  parson  about  his  biscuit 
speech,  and  he  replied  good-naturedly:  "Oh,  I 
can  wait  fifty  years.  I  have  no  administrative 
capacity,  or  I'd  get  the  thing  done  myself.  I  have 
spent  two  years  studying  conditions  and  I  have 
mastered  the  facts.  All  I  can  do  is  to  present 
those  facts.  When  enough  people  have  accumu- 
lated like  facts,  then  the  argument  will  be  unan- 
swerable and  the  change  will  come." 

The  little  town  had  not  wholly  outgrown  the 
habits  of  village  days,  and  men  still  met  on  winter 
afternoons  around  the  stove  in  some  of  the  stores 
to  smoke  and  gossip.  One  of  the  favourite  haunts 
was  the  hardware  shop  of  one  of  the  vestrymen. 
Here  the  philosophers  of  the  village  store  held  high 
debate,  and  the  parson  was  a  frequent  visitor. 
His  contribution  to  the  argument  was  generally 
an  anecdote,  but  when  the  laugh  had  subsided, 
the  conviction  he  wished  to  carry  was  often  thrust 
home. 

One  rainy  afternoon  the  crowd  around  the  stove 


24          In  tHe  Service  of  tKe  King 

was  rather  larger  than  usual,  though  the  presence 
of  one  man  frequently  introduced  a  discordant 
note.  He  was  a  big,  rough,  boisterous  man,  who 
had  no  gift  of  listening  and  would  tolerate  no 
conversation  in  which  he  had  no  part.  He  was 
notoriously  irreverent  and  had  the  air  of  a  bully. 
Everybody  knew  that  there  were  some  dark 
chapters  in  his  life.  He  had  done  deeds  of  ruthless 
daring,  prompted  more,  perhaps,  by  an  utter  dis- 
regard of  consequence  than  from  any  deep-seated 
viciousness.  He  was  tolerated  only  because  he 
could  not  be  suppressed  without  an  actual  conflict 
— and  so  he  enjoyed  that  measure  of  immunity 
which  comes  to  every  man  who  in  the  public  mind 
is  labelled  dangerous.  He  tried  to  draw  the 
parson  into  a  theological  discussion  in  order,  as 
was  evident,  to  parade  his  own  reckless  disregard 
of  sacred  things.  The  parson  skilfully  avoided 
being  enticed  into  such  a  discussion  till  the  man 
said,  with  a  sneer:  "You  know  you  are  in  the 
preaching  business  for  what  you  can  get  out  of 
it,  and  would  sell  out  if  you  could  get  your  price. 
It's  my  creed  that  every  man  has  his  price. " 

It  was  an  insult,  and  every  man  present  was 
watching  the  parson  eagerly.  He  was  perfectly 
calm,  though  his  left  hand  clutched  his  pipe  a  little 
tighter  and  his  "talking  finger, "  as  the  fellows 


In  Country  and  Village  25 

used  to  call  it  at  college,  was  extended  and  rigid. 
His  words  cut  the  air  like  a  whip  lash:  "Your 
creed,  sir,  proves  nothing  but  that  you  are  per- 
sonally dishonest.  If,  in  your  opinion,  every 
man  has  his  price,  you  must  be  the  single  excep- 
tion in  the  whole  world,  or  you  are  a  self-confessed 
thief;  and  unless  you  can  prove  that  you  are  the 
one  exception,  your  word,  much  less  your  opinion, 
would  not  be  received  even  in  a  police  court." 

The  parson  thought  he  knew  his  man,  and  even 
while  he  was  speaking,  he  was  wondering  what  his 
face  was  going  to  look  like  when  the  bully's  big 
fist  had  smashed  it.  But  the  man  merely  gazed 
at  him  open-mouthed.  He  had  wished  to  test 
the  parson's  mettle,  but  he  had  not  expected  such 
a  broadside.  When  he  did  speak  it  was  in  a  very 
earnest  tone:  "Man,  do  you  talk  to  your  people 
like  that?  If  you  do,  111  come  to  hear  you." 

"I  have  never  before,"  said  the  parson,  "been 
forced  to  tell  the  truth  so  harshly,  but  my  aim  is 
to  tell  my  people  what  I  hold  to  be  true  at  any 
cost.  I  am  sorry,  gentlemen,"  he  went  on,  "to 
break  in  on  our  talk  with  a  sermon,  but  the  very 
name  of  manhood  has  been  blasphemed."  And 
then  he  began  to  talk.  Sitting  there  on  a  nail 
keg,  pipe  in  hand  still,  he  pleaded  with  them  never 
to  lose  faith  in  man,  "the  lowest  depth  of  infidel- 


26  In  tHe  Service  of  tKe  King 

ity,"  he  called  it.  "When  a  man,"  he  continued, 
"flings  away  his  trust  in  man,  it  is  a  sign  that  he 
has  already  flung  away  his  faith  in  God.  This 
place,  men,  is  sacred.  We  are  surrounded  by 
carpenters'  tools.  Every  hammer  and  saw  here 
cries  out  against  the  blasphemy  of  an  utterly 
corrupt  humanity.  The  Carpenter  of  Nazareth 
was  no  bungler,  and  He  built  His  Kingdom  on  His 
trust  in  redeemed  manhood." 

The  parson  talked  a  long  time.  It  was  a  strange 
place  for  a  sermon;  and  some  of  his  listeners  heard 
one  for  the  first  time  in  many  years.  Every  pipe 
was  out  when  he  finished,  and  an  old  fellow  sitting 
on  the  counter  drew  a  deep  breath  and  said  to  the 
parson:  "I'd  give  a  horse  if  my  son  could  have 
heard  you." 

The  crowd  broke  up  then,  but  ever  after  that 
the  bully  was  the  parson's  sworn  defender.  His 
delight  was  to  tell  how  the  parson  had  called  him 
a  thief,  and  proved  it.  The  parson's  talk  had 
cut  deep  into  more  than  one  life,  and  the  bully 
rather  plumed  himself  on  being  the  occasion  of  it. 

The  parson  was  a  hard  student,  and  his  working 
desk  looked  more  like  a  college  professor's  than 
like  that  of  a  village  minister.  He  read  in  a  curi- 
ous fashion,  arguing  with  every  author,  writing 
all  over  the  margins,  and  sometimes  he  wrote  a 


In  Country  and  Village  27 

treatise  while  reading  one.  The  village  doctor 
was  his  chum,  and  once,  after  midnight,  the 
doctor,  returning  from  the  bedside  of  a  sick  man, 
saw  the  light  burning  in  the  study,  and  walked  in. 
He  found  the  parson  deep  in  an  old  volume  and 
asked  what  he  was  up  to.  "Robbing  a  grave/' 
was  the  answer.  "  Here  is  a  book  great  enough  to 
mark  an  epoch,  and  I'll  wager  it  hasn't  been  read 
twice  in  twenty  years.  It  is  one  of  the  best  ways 
to  teach  truth,  but  the  old  prophet  prophesied  to 
his  generation  in  an  unknown  tongue.  He  called 
his  book,  Methodological  Propczdeutic.  He  was 
buried  under  the  weight  of  that  awful  title,  and 
here  am  I,  as  happy  as  a  whole  tribe  of  Esquimaux 
when  they  come  across  the  frozen  carcass  of  a 
primeval  mammoth.  There  is  enough  meat  in 
this  old  volume  to  run  a  theological  mess-room 
for  a  year." 

"See  here,"  said  the  doctor,  "you  have  got 
to  explain  to  me  how  it  is  that  you  are  buried  here 
in  this  little  hollow  of  the  world.  Why  don't  you 
go  to  a  larger  field  of  labour?" 

"  I  have  had  no  temptation  to  leave,  for  no  other 
church  has  ever  asked  for  me.  The  fact  is, '  Doc, ' 
I  am  not  considered  safe,"  replied  the  parson. 

"What  do  you  mean  by  safe?"  asked  the  doctor. 

"Oh  I  suppose,"  answered  the  parson,  "the  use 


28  In  tHe  Service  of  tHe  Ring 

of  the  word  'safe'  is  the  same  when  applied  to  a 
parson  as  when  applied  to  a  horse.  A  safe  horse 
is  a  horse  any  lady  can  drive. 

"It  seems  to  worry  you,  old  chap,  that  I  am 
not  a  successful  preacher.  Fill  up  your  pipe,  and 
if  you  can  keep  your  eyes  open  long  enough,  per- 
haps I  may  be  able  to  give  you  at  least  a  partial 
explanation  of  it.  I  am,  I  fear,  a  most  uncomfort- 
able person  to  have  about.  For  the  life  of  me, 
I  can't  help  disturbing  the  spirit  of  worship,  that 
sweet  calm  when  people  are  supposed  to  drink  in 
truth  by  atmospheric  inhalation. 

"On  last  Sunday  I  preached  in  a  city  church, 
and  the  congregation,  accustomed  to  the  deliber- 
ate movements  of  their  old  rector's  mind,  were 
evidently  very  restless  under,  what  seemed  to 
them,  the  dangerous  novelty  of  my  teaching.  I 
have,  I  am  told,  an  unfortunate  habit  of  changing 
the  application  of  accepted  terms.  I  commenced 
my  sermon  by  stating  that  my  subject  was  '  Vest- 
ments and  Ritual.'  Instantly  the  people  were 
alert  with  interest,  an  interest  that  passed  into 
dazed  wonderment  when  I  added :  '  I  do  not  mean 
by  that,  that  I  am  going  to  talk  about  clothes  and 
posture  and  forms  of  words,  for  I  know  no  author- 
ity on  such  subjects,  but  about  character  and 
actions,  which  are  the  divinely  ordained  vestments 


In  Country  and  Village  29 

and  ritual  of  the  Christian  Church.'  If  it  hadn't 
been  for  the  fact  that  I  saw  in  the  congregation 
a  keen-eyed  old  lady,  whose  face,  hid  away  under 
a  poke  bonnet,  showed  that  she  understood  what 
I  was  talking  about,  I  do  not  think  I  could  have 
kept  on. 

"The  average  church-goer  looks  at  time  and 
eternity  from  a  certain  fixed  angle  of  mental  vision. 
To  accept  the  suggestion  to  change  his  point  of 
view  would  disturb  him  as  much  as  to  make  him 
give  up  his  particular  nook  in  the  corner  of  the 
family  pew.  To  demand  that  the  truth  be  left 
untrammelled  by  maxims  that  fetter  or  watch- 
words that  blind,  is  as  revolutionary  to  many 
minds  as  to  suggest  to  a  pew-holding  congregation 
that  the  church  be  made  free.  In  each  case,  the 
pleasant  sense  of  the  blessed  fixedness  of  things 
would  be  destroyed.  *  If  truth  be  left  free, '  says 
one,  'she  might  wander  far  ahead  of  me,  and 
I  should  either  have  to  be  content  to  be  left  behind 
or  gird  up  my  loins  and  follow  after.  I  am  too  old 
to  change.  Fetter  the  truth  and  she  stays  by 
you. '  '  If  the  church  be  made  free, '  says  another, 
'why,  any  stranger  has  as  much  right  to  my  pew 
in  God's  house  as  I  have ;  and  for  me  to  sit  where 
my  father  sat  would  necessitate  my  being  always 
on  time,  and  this  is  not  always  convenient.  Family 


3O  In  tKe  Service  of  tKe 

pews  give  a  tone  to  a  church  that  nothing  else 
can  give/  When  you  tell  him  that  the  family 
pew  did  as  much  as  any  single  cause  to  alienate 
the  masses  and  to  destroy  the  Colonial  Church, 
he  sniffs  and  turns  away,  and  ever  afterwards 
thinks  you  a  dangerous  young  man." 

"What  surprises  me,"  said  the  doctor,  "is  that 
obnoxious  optimism  of  yours.  When  you  get 
hold  of  what  you  call  a  truth,  you  would  button- 
hole anybody  to  tell  him  the  good  news.  You 
are  a  veritable  gossip  in  the  matter.  A  rebuff  like 
that  you  have  just  described  would  cure  me  of  the 
belief  that  truth  would  win  out  at  last.  If  men 
reject  with  scorn  what  is  to  you  a  patent  truth, 
what  makes  you  think  it  worth  while  to  keep  on 
offering  them  the  thing  they  don't  want?  Where 
did  you  learn  this  trick  of  optimism  anyhow?" 

"I  came  across  it  years  ago,"  replied  the  parson, 
"in  a  life  of  Keppler.  When  the  scientists  of 
Keppler's  day  ridiculed  his  discovery  of  the  law  of 
the  heavenly  bodies,  Keppler  smiled  and  said: 
'If  God  has  waited  six  thousand  years  to  let 
Keppler  know,  then  surely  Keppler  can  wait  a 
generation. ' 

The  parson's  mother  used  to  say  that  she  had 
sent  five  sons  to  college  in  search  of  knowledge, 
but  if  they  found  it  they  never  shared  it  with  the 


In  Country  and  Village  31 

women  folk  at  home;  that  the  single  item  of 
knowledge  she  had  been  able  to  abstract  from 
any  one  of  them  was,  that  if  a  spoon  be  placed  in 
a  cup  you  could  pour  in  boiling  water  without 
running  the  risk  of  cracking  the  china.  The  par- 
son furnished  that  item,  it  being  the  single  fact 
that  remained  over  and  above  the  amount  of 
information  he  had  given  back  to  the  university 
when  he  had  handed  in  his  graduation  paper  on 
chemistry. 

The  only  way  in  which  he  can  account  for  the 
fact  that  this  bit  of  knowledge  remained  with 
him,  was  that  it  was  given  as  a  kindly  word  of 
caution  and  not  "in  the  course."  It  is  a  strange 
fact  that  everything  in  the  course,  being  held  in 
memory  by  the  fixed  effort  of  the  will,  till  returned 
to  the  professor  and  receipted  for  on  a  sheep-skin, 
promptly  disappeared  from  his  mind  never  to 
come  back.  The  things  he  once  knew  best,  he 
knows  now  not  at  all;  and  he  is  conscious  that  in 
his  brain  there  are  spots,  now  permanently  barren, 
where  the  highest-priced  knowledge  obtainable 
once  flourished  for  a  season.  The  parson  had 
been  a  student  for  thirty  odd  years.  Half  that 
period  was  spent  not  in  tutelage,  but  in  serfdom. 
Even  now,  when  he  has  been  out  of  school  almost 
as  long  as  he  was  in  it,  the  form  which  the  night- 


32          In  tKe  Service  of  tHe  King 

mare  most  frequently  takes  is  the  inquisitorial 
agony  of  the  examination  room. 

The  parson  is  persuaded  that  the  ordinary 
diploma  is  nothing  more  or  less  than  an  honourable 
discharge  from  the  ranks  of  learning  on  account 
of  permanent  disabilities. 

College  culture  is  something  like  South  Ameri- 
can patriotism.  Everybody  has  heard  the  story  of 
Castro's  recruiting  sergeant  who  wrote  back  to 
the  commander  from  the  field  of  his  operations: 
"I  send  you  one  hundred  volunteers.  Please 
return  the  handcuffs." 

But  'tis  a  far  cry  from  teacups  to  Venezuela, 
and  the  parson  must  leave  the  contemplation  of  the 
sheepskin  and  return  to  his  mutton.  What  he 
wanted  to  say  was,  that  two  occasions  in  his  college 
and  seminary  days  stand  out  in  memory.  They 
are  the  fixed  stars  by  which  he  still  steers  his  craft. 
One  day,  in  the  physical  laboratory,  dear  old 
Frank  Smith,  having  placed  a  number  of  appara- 
tus, told  the  class  the  nature  of  the  experiment  he 
was  about  to  make.  He  explained  the  law  of 
physics  to  be  exemplified,  and  then  proceeded. 

To  the  infinite  delight  of  the  class,  the  result 
prophesied  did  not  actualize.  They  expected  to 
see  in  the  professor  the  evidence  of  chagrin  at  the 
failure ;  and  were  puzzled  when  he,  after  repeating 


In  Country  and  Village  33 

the  experiment  with  the  same  result,  looked  up, 
and  with  a  face  all  aglow  with  excitement,  said 
exultantly:  "Men,  the  accepted  law  does  not  work 
in  this  case.  We  are  confronted  by  a  difficulty, 
and  in  science,  as  in  life,  every  difficulty  is  a  door. 
We  are  standing  at  a  locked  door  in  the  great 
house  of  knowledge.  No  man  has  ever  entered  it, 
and  no  man  can  tell  what  a  wealth  of  good  things 
lies  behind  this  closed  door.  I  want  every  man 
here  to  join  me  in  the  search  for  the  key  that  will 
unlock  this  difficulty.'* 

Forgotten  forever  is  the  great  mass  of  facts 
gathered  with  burning  eyes  and  aching  brain  in 
that  class,  but  fresh  as  if  it  all  happened  yesterday 
is  the  memory  of  the  eager  face  of  the  teacher  as 
he  stood  there  in  the  presence  of  a  new  difficulty. 

The  other  incident  belongs  to  a  later  date.  The 
parson  had  gone  to  the  seminary  with  one  equip- 
ment at  least.  The  training  of  sixteen  years  in 
the  schoolroom  had  taught  him  how  to  study. 
The  habit  of  sticking  to  a  task  till  the  problem  was 
solved  was  fixed.  He  soon  found  that  the  old 
struggles  in  the  college  curriculum  were  but  as  a 
mimic  contest  compared  with  the  forces  at  work 
in  the  field  of  theology.  Here  he  must  fight  with 
all  his  might  for  the  very  warrant  of  the  calling 
he  had  chosen.  Needless  to  say  that  he  was  soon 

3 


34  I**  tKe  Service  of  tKe  Ring 

entangled  in  the  mesh  of  conflicting  creeds.  Like 
many  another,  he  found  that  the  harder  he  strug- 
gled the  tighter  the  cords  were  drawn. 

Convinced  that  he  could  never  unravel  the 
tangled  skein  of  thought  without  help,  he  sought 
the  counsel  of  an  aged  professor.  The  memory 
of  that  interview  is  painful  still.  For  the  first 
time,  he  came  in  conflict  with  the  pious  agnosti- 
cism of  the  old  evangelical  school  of  thought, 
which  made  mystery  the  sanction  of  religion. 
He  was  told  that  the  question  he  wanted  answered 
was  a  dangerous  one,  and  that  the  only  thing  to 
do  was  to  stop  thinking  about  it.  He  persisted 
in  his  request  for  literature  on  the  subject,  and 
was  met  by  the  reply  that  the  professor  knew  no 
safe  books  on  that  theme,  and  again  was  told  to 
stop  thinking  and  the  doubt  would  die.  With  a 
burst  of  youthful  pride,  the  boy  replied:  "I  don't 
intend  to  think  about  anything  else  until  I  find 
an  answer  to  my  question." 

The  months  that  followed  were  trying  ones. 
The  doubt  was  there.  The  professor  had  told 
him  that  it  was  a  third -century  heresy.  To  har- 
bour that  doubt  seemed  a  grievous  disloyalty  to 
the  Church  of  his  birth  and  of  his  love ;  but  to  stop 
thinking,  to  run  away  from  the  first  difficulty, 
this  he  knew  to  be  disloyal  to  the  King  Himself. 


In  Country  and  Village  35 

One  day  he  sat  in  the  class-room,  listening  to 
a  new  teacher.  One  of  the  class,  startled  by  the 
bold  utterance  of  the  teacher,  asked:  "Is  not  that 
position  dangerous?"  Instantly  a  change  came 
over  the  teacher.  Several  times  during  the  hour 
the  irrepressible  humour  of  the  professor  had 
shown  itself,  but  there  was  prophetic  earnestness 
in  the  hushed  tones  of  the  voice  that  answered: 
" Dangerous!  Suppose  it  is  dangerous,  what  of 
it?  Men,  you  must  understand  that  man  was 
made  for  the  truth,  and  becomes  truly  a  man  only 
in  the  seeking  of  the  truth.  Seek  for  it,  men. 
Follow  it,  no  matter  where  it  leads.  Seek  it 
earnestly,  honestly,  reverently;  and  you  may  know 
that  the  voice  that  calls  you  onward  is  the  voice 
of  God.  The  way  to  it  may  be  difficult;  keep  on. 
You  may  grope  for  years  in  the  fog  of  doubt,  but 
don't  give  up  the  search.  You  may  go  down,  at 
last,  in  the  bog  of  despair,  but  my  word  for  it,  if 
your  search  has  been  earnest,  honest,  and  reverent, 
God  Himself  will  have  sunk  you  in  that  bog; 
sunk  you  there,  that  some  man  more  fitted  for 
the  God-appointed  task,  but  helpless  without  the 
marks  of  your  footprints  in  the  way,  may  in  that 
bog  find  a  foothold  on  your  sunken  body.  He  will 
carry  the  line  over  what  will  mark  the  opening  of 
a  new  highway  to  the  city  of  the  living  God,  but 


36  In  tHe  Service  of  tKe 

you,  no  less  than  he,  will  be  honoured  of  Him 
Who  doeth  all  things  well." 

To  one  of  the  class,  at  least,  these  words  meant 
the  gift  of  life  itself.  Somewhere  in  his  brain  or 
heart  the  last  fetter  that  bound  him  to  the  dead 
letter  snapped,  and  he  knew  that  he  was  free.  He 
could  hardly  keep  back  the  cheer  that  surged  up 
to  his  lips.  Here  was  one  to  whom  he  could  go 
for  counsel.  He  did  go,  and  step  by  step  the 
heights  of  vision  were  climbed.  'Tis  true  that  at 
the  end  the  truth  grasped  was  but  an  elementary 
tenet  of  the  faith;  but  the  hold  of  that  truth  upon 
him  drew  from  him  not  the  mere  homage  to  the 
form  of  sound  words,  but  the  love  that  a  man 
bears  to  his  living  child,  for  whom  he  would  die 
in  the  exultant  joy  of  willing  sacrifice. 


Ill 


IN  those  first  years  the  parson  was  conscious 
all  along  of  an  intellectual  loneliness.  In  the 
thrifty  little  village  there  were  plenty  of  men  of 
shrewd  business  sense,  and  more  than  one  with  a 
keen  native  sense  of  humour,  but  not  a  student 
among  them.  The  parson  had  been  at  school 
since  his  sixth  year.  Every  friendship  of  life  was 
associated  with  the  class-room.  Every  thought 
of  his  life  he  had  shared  with  these  friends  as 
naturally  as  he  shared  his  lunch  at  school  or  his 
purse  at  college.  Here  in  the  village  this  sweet 
commerce  of  the  mind  was  stayed,  and  he  felt  its 
loss  keenly.  He  smiles  now,  as  he  thinks  of  the 
first  convocation  he  attended.  He  must  have 
impressed  his  brethren  of  the  cloth  as  a  young 
madman.  He  button-holed  every  one  of  them  and 
poured  into  their  ears  the  pent-up  thoughts  of 
many  lonely  months.  He  bombarded  them  with 
questions  as  rapidly  as  the  child  at  the  fair  pelts 
the  tired  parent  with  inquiries.  For  the  most  part 
they  listened  patiently  enough,  but  answered: 

37 


38  In  tHe  Service  of  tHe  Hang' 

"I  have  not  thought  of  such  questions  for  years. 
I  have  not  time  for  the  study  of  such  things." 
One  dear  old  minister  whose  convocation  sermon 
was  written  in  the  language  of  a  bygone  age,  but 
whose  heart  was  big  with  love  and  whose  Christian 
life  found  a  fit  vehicle  in  a  robust  manhood,  looked 
at  his  eager  young  brother  in  a  dazed  sort  of  way 
and  said:  "What  is  the  use  of  going  over  all  that 
ground  again?  I  accepted  all  that  before  I  entered 
the  ministry.  To  investigate  it  now  would  mean 
that  I  had  begun  to  doubt  it,  and  I  never  had  a 
doubt  in  my  life." 

The  parson  went  back  to  his  home  puzzled  and 
troubled.  Had  he  somehow  missed  the  way,  and 
was  he  wandering  in  forbidden  fields?  Men  whose 
Christian  life  was  eloquent  of  the  Spirit's  power 
within  had  smiled  at  his  enthusiasm  and  talked 
of  the  study  of  the  deep  things  of  God  as  something 
for  which  they  found  no  time.  The  Atonement, 
on  the  meaning  of  which  he  had  pondered  many 
a  night  till  the  clock  registered  the  beginning  of 
another  day,  these  men  had  defined  in  the  fixed 
phraseology  of  an  old  text-book  long  out  of  print. 
They  had  talked  of  it  as  a  single  isolated  fact  in 
time,  whereas  to  the  parson's  mind  it  was  inter- 
woven with  the  texture  of  human  life  in  such  a 
way  that  he  caught  a  glimpse  of  it  in  the  flush  of 


In  Country  and  Village  39 

shame  that  mantled  a  boy's  face  when  he  pleaded 
with  him  to  make  his  life  a  cleaner  thing ;  and  he 
saw  it  flash  in  the  dulled  eye  of  age  when  he  re- 
minded them  that  they  were  but  little  children  in 
the  nursery  of  God,  and  that  He  could  redeem 
their  wasted  lives  in  that  eternal  life  begun  here 
in  which  death  is  only  an  incident. 

When  the  parson  attended  his  first  meeting  of 
the  council,  he  was  greeted  affectionately  by  his 
friend  who  had  never  had  a  doubt.  He  put  his 
arms  about  the  parson  and  said:  "I  have  been 
praying  for  you,  boy."  The  parson  thanked  him, 
but  the  anxious  look  in  his  friend's  eye  prompted 
the  parson  to  ask  the  meaning  of  his  anxiety. 
The  reply  gave  him  food  for  thought :  "  I  am  afraid 
for  you,  boy.  You  study  too  much.  You  ask 
too  many  questions;  and  questions  are  dangerous 
things  for  the  minister."  It  was  in  vain  that  the 
parson  sought  to  extract  from  the  other  any 
reason  for  supposing  that  any  moral  obliquity 
lurked  in  the  desire  to  know.  It  was  in  vain  that 
he  protested  that  fear  was  to  him  a  form  of  infi- 
delity. It  was  in  vain  that  he  declared  he  saw 
little  difference  in  the  attitude  of  mind  of  one  who 
said,  "You  must  not  ask,"  and  of  one  who  said, 
"You  cannot  know."  His  friend  only  answered: 
"It  is  dangerous  and  I  am  afraid  for  you." 


40     In  the  Service  of  the  King' 

It  was  only  when  the  parson  added,  "I  never 
open  a  new  book  or  start  in  search  of  fuller  know- 
ledge of  God,  without  asking  the  King  for  the 
teaching  light  of  the  Holy  Spirit  on  the  way/1 
that  the  anxious  look  grew  less,  and  even  then  his 
friend  went  away  saddened  that  a  minister  of  the 
Church  should  cherish  the  restless  desire  to  know 
more  than  the  unexplored  facts  that  he  had  ac- 
cepted when  he  took  his  ordination  vows. 

Browsing  in  strange  pastures,  the  parson  had 
stumbled  on  a  phrase  of  George  Fox's  that  summed 
up  his  unformulated  philosophy:  "A  minister 
must  preach  to  the  condition  of  his  people."  The 
application  of  this  principle  forced  him  one  Sunday 
morning  to  choose  a  strange  theme  for  a  sermon. 
It  was  in  one  of  his  country  churches,  and  the 
time  was  one  of  great  agricultural  depression. 
The  congregation  were  all  country  folk,  and 
tobacco  was  the  one  money  crop  of  them  all. 
The  sale  of  the  tobacco  was  the  crowning  event 
of  the  year.  New  dresses,  the  children's  clothes, 
the  much-needed  mule,  the  sewing-machine,  and 
the  new  plough,  were  all  to  be  got  "  after  the 
tobacco  was  sold." 

It  was  Sunday,  October  3d.  On  the  Friday 
before,  he  had  driven  twenty  miles  across  his  parish 
through  fields  of  growing  tobacco.  Fortune  had 


In  Country  and  Village  41 

smiled  upon  the  farmer,  and  the  discouragement 
of  a  late  spring  had  been  forgotten  in  the  promise 
of  the  summer.  It  was  the  best  crop  for  years. 
Friday  night  the  wind  shifted  and  died  away.  A 
heavy  frost  fell,  and  when  the  farmer  awoke  on 
Saturday  he  looked  out  upon  waste  fields.  In  a 
single  night  the  toil  of  all  the  year  had  been  made 
futile.  Not  a  stalk  reared  its  head.  The  frost, 
like  some  awful  curse,  had  smitten  all;  and  as 
every  man  looked  out  across  his  desolated  fields, 
the  spectres  of  the  mortgage  on  the  old  home,  and 
the  unpaid  bill  for  fertilizer,  walked  down  the 
tobacco  rows  and  mocked  him  in  his  grief.  The 
parson  had  never  before,  and  has  never  since, 
looked  into  faces  like  those  in  the  pews  that  morn- 
ing. The  women,  whose  labours  in  the  dairy 
and  with  the  fowls  had  earned  the  money  to  pay 
the  help,  felt  the  blight  as  much  as  the  men;  and 
in  their  eyes  was  the  look  of  patient  helplessness 
that  we  sometimes  see  in  the  eyes  of  a  desperately 
wounded  animal.  The  men  sat  there  cowed.  For 
the  time  they  had  ceased  to  struggle.  On  the  face 
of  most  of  them  was  the  stubble  of  a  week's 
growth  of  beard.  To-day  for  the  first  time  since 
a  boy  the  Sunday  shave  had  been  omitted.  The 
listless  hands  would  not  do  their  work. 

The  parson  was  still  a  fledgling,  and  the  care- 


42  In  tHe  Service  of  tKe  Ring 

fully  prepared  sermon  was  being  carried  in  his 
brain  as  the  child  balances  a  full  pail  upon  its 
head.  He  read  his  text  and  got  through  a  few 
sentences.  Then  the  awful  mockery  of  it  all 
mastered  him.  Here  were  these  poor,  desolate 
children  of  the  Father,  come  to  His  house  as  the 
one  refuge  from  despair,  and  the  steward  of  His 
mysteries  was  offering  them  stones  for  bread. 
As  one  who  frees  himself  from  fetters,  the  parson 
flung  his  text  away,  and  blurted  out:  "I  can't  do 
it;  there  is  but  one  theme  for  to-day.  I  am  going 
to  preach  to  you  about  frost-bitten  tobacco,"  and 
he  did.  God  gave  him  power  to  lift  the  veil,  and 
they  saw  His  face. 

Before  he  finished  the  sermon,  the  parson  and 
his  people  were  weeping  together,  and  one  poor 
fellow,  the  title  to  whose  home  the  frost  had  taken 
from  him,  was  sobbing  like  a  child.  Is  it  any 
wonder  that  every  year,  when  the  first  frost  is  on 
the  fields,  the  memory  of  that  hour,  when  like 
little  children  we  brought  our  hurts  to  God  and 
sobbed  out  our  pain  at  His  knees,  comes  back  to 
us  all?  Is  it  any  wonder  that  when  the  parson 
went  back  to  his  books,  and  studied  the  works 
of  the  great  masters,  wherein  is  written  much  on 
the  Problem  of  Pain,  he  found  the  way  a  little 
less  dark,  and  saw  a  gleam  that  beckoned  to  the 


In  Country  and  Village  43 

edg°  of  the  waste?  It  was  during  these  days  that 
the  parson  became  conscious  of  a  hidden  disloyalty 
in  his  soul.  In  spite  of  many  discouragements,  his 
life  was  a  happy  one.  He  was  the  son  in  many 
homes,  and  his  people  made  him  rich  with  the 
gift  of  love;  but  at  one  season  of  the  year  he  was 
wretched.  The  time  of  the  bishop's  visitation 
was  a  yearly  agony.  The  Sunday-schools  were 
small,  the  congregations  a  fixed  quantity,  and 
former  ministers  had  gleaned  the  homes  for  the 
confirmation  class.  A  year's  preaching,  and  when 
the  bishop  came,  one  shy  girl,  perhaps,  of  whose 
spiritual  life  the  parson  could  know  but  little, 
would,  through  her  mother,  give  in  her  name. 
In  vain  he  preached  in  frenzied  zeal.  The  power 
of  the  initiative  was  gone  in  the  few  old  men  whose 
names  were  not  on  the  church  list,  and  his  appeals 
were  unintelligible.  Again  and  again  he  was 
tempted  to  urge  some  untutored  ones  to  take  a 
step  whose  meaning  they  did  not  grasp,  but  some- 
thing stayed  him.  He  who  often  said  to  himself 
that  he  was  not  afraid  of  any  man,  found  himself 
ashamed  to  face  the  kindly  inquiry  of  the  old 
bishop  at  his  coming;  but  bad  as  this  was,  it  did 
not  compare  with  the  dread  of  that  moment  when 
the  bishop  would  read  his  report  in  council,  and 
the  parson  would  hear  him  say:  "Visited  the  five 


44  In  tHe  Service  of  tHe  King 

churches  in county,  and  confirmed  three." 

He  would  be  put  to  shame  before  his  brethren 
and  branded  as  an  incompetent. 

Every  year  after  the  bishop's  visit  he  felt 
degraded,  not  at  his  failure,  but  at  the  way  he 
took  his  failure.  So  one  day  he  made  up  his 
mind  to  have  it  out  with  the  King;  to  pray  for  the 
purging  of  the  soul  that  would  make  him  a  man 
again.  It  was  then  that  he  found  he  was  harbour- 
ing a  pernicious  heresy,  not  that  he  minded  being 
a  heretic,  for  he  had  found  out  before  this  that 
every  man  who  does  his  work  in  solitary  places  is, 
perforce,  a  heretic;  for  loneliness  breeds  strange 
fancies;  but  here  was  a  heresy  that  the  King  Him- 
self had  condemned.  It  was  the  heresy  of  num- 
bers. Again  and  again  He  had  winnowed  the 
crowd  in  search  of  the  true  ones.  In  the  end  He 
had  gathered  but  a  handful;  but  they  were  the 
good  seed,  like  Himself,  the  living  Word. 

Little  by  little  the  truth  came  to  the  parson; 
the  truth  that  is  now  so  apparent  that  he  wonders 
it  was  not  always  his.  The  truth  is  this,  that  the 
Church,  and  not  the  preacher,  is  the  converting 
power.  The  preacher's  word  can  help  only  to 
interpret  his  own  life  and  hope,  and  it  is  his  life 
that  counts.  If  he  fails  to  quicken  the  souls  of 
the  members  of  the  Church,  he  has  failed  utterly, 


In  Country  and  Village  45 

for  the  Church  is  to  do  the  work,  not  he.  The 
parson's  friends  still  smile  when  they  recall  to  him 
the  fervour  with  which  he  preached  to  them  what 
was  to  him  a  new  truth.  They  called  him  a 
dreamer,  because  he  learned  to  be  content  with 
the  few  faithful  ones.  A  learned  judge  gave  him 
fatherly  counsel,  telling  him  that  he  was  over- 
reaching the  mark,  and  setting  the  standard  too 
high  for  the  man  outside  the  Church.  The  judge 
has  never  yet  understood  the  parson's  answer: 
"I  am  not  preaching  to  the  man  outside,  for  I 
have  no  desire  to  start  an  argument  with  such  a 
one.  I  am  preaching  to  the  faithful  forty,  for  if 
they  and  I  together  can  interpret  Christ  in  our 
lives,  there  will  be  no  room  for  argument.  The 
man  outside  must  believe." 

One  of  the  sweetest  memories  of  those  days  is 
of  the  presence  of  two  old  negroes,  a  man  and  his 
wife,  at  every  service  of  the  church.  Old  Ben 
had  been  the  body-servant  of  one  of  the  vestry. 
When  his  former  master's  health  gave  way  and  it 
was  plain  to  all  that  the  end  was  near,  Ben  came 
to  him  and  said:  "Master,  I'se  been  a  Baptist  all 
my  life,  but  you  and  me  ain't  got  long  to  live  now, 
and  I'd  like  to  jine  your  church  before  I  die. 
Somehow  I  feel  it  would  keep  me  near  you  always." , 
So  much  in  earnest  was  the  old  man  that  when 


46  In.  tKe  Service  of  tKe  King 

the  bishop  came  he  was  confirmed,  and  the  church 
knew  no  more  devout  soul  than  the  old  servant. 
His  master  died,  but  Ben  was  faithful  to  his 
master's  church.  On  Communion  Sunday  he 
and  his  wife  waited  till  all  the  rest  of  the  congre- 
gation had  been  to  the  Holy  Table,  and  then  they 
would  come  up  together  and  kneel  on  the  floor 
several  feet  away  from  the  chancel  rail.  No  per- 
suasion could  bring  them  nearer.  The  picture 
of  those  two  kneeling  figures  is  burnt  into  the 
parson's  brain.  Types  of  a  suppliant  race,  re- 
cognizing the  gulf  between  the  races,  and  yet 
wanting  to  be  near  the  more  favoured  ones  always. 
Old  Betsy  had  followed  her  husband  into  the 
church,  and  she  was  very  proud  of  her  member- 
ship, but  the  habits  of  her  earlier  training  still 
clung  to  her,  and  from  the  back  pew  where  she 
sat  she  would  give  audible  approbation  of  the 
parson's  preaching.  Her  earnestness  deepened 
with  the  earnestness  of  the  appeal,  and  there  was 
a  crescendo  of  "Dat's  so,"  "Yes,  Lord,"  that 
never  failed  to  be  heard.  The  people  grew  accus- 
tomed to  it,  and  it  provoked  no  smile.  Old 
Betsy's  contribution  to  the  maintenance  of  the 
church  consisted  in  "washing  the  preacher's 


circus." 


THE  TOWN  MINISTRY 


ONE  Sunday  morning  the  parson  was  sitting  at 
his  desk  reading  over  the  notes  of  his  sermon, 
when  he  saw  two  men  coming  down  the  street 
toward  the  church.  It  needed  no  second  glance 
to  tell  him  that  they  were  strangers;  for  even  if 
he  had  not  known  the  whole  male  population  of 
the  village,  their  air  of  curiosity  in  unfamiliar 
surroundings  would  have  told  the  story.  They 
paused  for  a  moment  just  before  they  reached  the 
church,  and  then  one  of  them  went  into  the  build- 
ing, while  the  other  remained  outside.  When  the 
parson  entered,  he  saw  the  two  men  sitting  on 
opposite  sides  of  the  church,  and  he  knew  that  he 
was  being  investigated  by  a  committee.  Such 
things  have  to  be,  perhaps;  but  if  other  parsons 
feel  the  humiliation  of  such  an  ordeal  as  did  the 
parson  of  this  story,  then  this  method  can  be 
quoted  to  justify  the  cruder  methods  of  the  Inqui- 
sition. Many  times  since  then  the  parson  has 

47 


48          In  tHe  Service  of  tHe  King 

noticed  the  vestry  committee  in  the  congregation. 
They  always  sit  apart,  and  they  always  time  the 
sermon.  Time  and  the  oft-repeated  experience 
ought  to  have  taught  him  patience,  but  even  to 
this  day  he  finds  it  hard  to  ignore  the  presence  of 
these  sermon  tasters.  Only  a  short  time  since  he 
found  them  lying  in  wait.  Their  air  was  critical, 
and  as  the  parson's  colloquial  speech  touched  upon 
the  commonplace  things  of  daily  life,  the  tired 
look  of  disappointed  seekers  settled  upon  them. 
It  was  then  that  the  parson  came  near  to  making 
history.  He  was  trying  to  minister  to  his  people, 
to  quicken  the  feeble  interest  of  some  spent  life, 
to  hearten  the  patient  burden-bearer  whose 
strength  was  almost  gone,  to  force  the  bitter 
medicine  of  unwelcome  truth  through  the  set 
lips  of  the  wilful  one  whose  soul  was  sick  unto 
death,  to  pour  the  balm  on  the  bruised  one  who 
shrank  even  from  the  healing  touch,  to  awaken 
the  sluggish  young  soldier  to  a  living  loyalty; 
and  here  were  these  two  critics,  counting  the 
minutes  and  measuring  the  pitch  and  volume  of  his 
tones.  He  paused  and  flung  up  his  head,  and  was 
silent  for  a  little  while.  It  was  an  awkward 
moment  for  the  congregation,  for  the  parson 
seemed  to  have  forgotten  his  theme.  He  was 
searching  through  his  quiver  for  some  straight 


The  Town  Ministry  49 

Saxon  words  that  would  carry  true.  He  was  going 
to  ask  that  committee  to  leave,  and  leave  at  once. 
He  had  found  the  words,  and  his  lips  were  framed 
to  speak  them.  But  even  as  the  taut  string  was 
being  set  free,  the  grip  of  the  old  guest  law  of  his 
people,  who  for  three  centuries  had  lived  along 
the  James,  held  him.  After  all,  they  were  guests, 
and  besides,  it  was  the  Father's  house,  not  his. 
He  never  heard  from  the  committee,  nor  does  the 
stately  warden  of  a  great  church  know  how  near 
he  was  to  being  kicked  by  a  restless  young  colt. 

But  this  is  recent  history,  and  we  left  the  parson 
being  investigated  for  the  first  time.  Those  two 
must  have  been  tired  with  the  journey,  and  have 
slept  peacefully  through  the  sermon,  for  the  parson 
was  called  to  their  church.  It  was  at  this  time 
that  the  parson  first  came  in  contact  with  that 
popular  fallacy  known  as  the  "larger  field." 
He  was  told — and  he  told  himself — that  here  was 
a  summons  to  a  larger  field.  The  appeal  of  the 
crowd  is  like  the  appeal  of  the  abyss.  The  man 
looks  down  and  finds  immensity  beneath  him 
instead  of  above  him;  and  he  can  make  this  im- 
mensity his  own  by  just  letting  go.  It  is  a  sort 
of  inverted  and  degenerate  aspiration. 

Well,  the  parson,  like  many  a  better  man,  let 
go,  and  chose  the  larger  field.  Whatever  blessings 


50          In  tKe  Service  of  tKe  King 

have  come  to  him — and  they  have  been  many — • 
he  knows  he  has  missed  the  joy  of  conquest  that 
might  have  been  his,  had  he  not  given  up  that 
first  work.  The  field  he  left  is  still  unconquered 
territory,  and  awaits  the  coming  of  one  whose 
loyalty  to  the  cause  no  heresy  of  numbers  can 
shake;  who  knows  that  promotion  in  the  King's 
service  is  ever  to  the  harder  task  and  not  to  the 
larger  field ;  who  welcomes  the  command  to  attempt 
the  impossible,  for  he  knows  that  the  King  Him- 
self keeps  near  to  those  who  are  commissioned  to 
find  a  way. 

The  incidents  of  the  move  to  town  bring  a  smile 
as  he  recalls  them  now,  but  they  were  almost 
tragic  in  their  enactment — the  long  journey  in  a 
day  coach,  the  aching  sense  of  being  a  deserter, 
the  anxiety  for  the  wife  who  had  done  the  work 
of  three  men  in  gathering  the  few  but  cumbersome 
belongings  of  the  household,  and  in  the  last  hours 
before  leaving  been  hostess  to  a  crowd  of  country 
friends,  and  presided  at  an  impromptu  but  exten- 
sive repast  spread  upon  trunks  and  packing  boxes. 
The  stove  had  never  a  chance  to  cool,  so  they 
left  it.  The  quaint  old  negro  cook,  who  had 
elected  to  follow  the  fortunes  of  her  mistress,  and 
who  was  already  desperately  homesick  and  look- 
ing very  woe-begone  in  her  nurse's  cap,  which  set 


The  Town  Ministry  51 

awry  upon  the  bushy  wig — the  cook's  chief  treas- 
ure— carefully  combed  out  and  up  for  the  journey. 
It  was  a  dishevelled  band  of  adventurers  that  got 
off  the  train  at  ten  o'clock  at  night.  The  poisoned 
air  of  a  close  and  overheated  car  had  dulled  the 
brain.  Clothes  and  hands  and  face  were  marked 
with  the  dust  of  travel,  The  baby,  wakened  in 
the  effort  to  put  on  its  wraps,  was  voicing  its 
treble  protest.  As  they  blinked  in  the  light  of 
the  station  lamps,  they  found  themselves  thrust 
into  a  waiting  carriage,  and  were  driven  to  the 
rectory.  Every  window  was  ablaze  with  light, 
and,  as  the  carriage  stopped,  the  door  opened  and 
showed  the  crowd  within.  The  whole  congrega- 
tion, men  and  women,  had  gathered  to  welcome 
the  parson  and  his  family.  If  this  narrative  should 
come  under  a  woman's  eye,  she  may  be  able  to 
understand  the  wife's  state  of  mind,  as  she  clutched 
the  parson's  hand  and  gasped:  "I  don't  believe 
it.  This  is  too  horrible  to  be  true."  The  par- 
son, who,  long  hours  before,  had  lost  any  power 
to  feel,  could  only  reply:  "It  is  unbelievable;  but 
unless  they  have  put  us  out  at  the  wrong  house 
we  have  got  to  face  it."  With  a  grim  tighten- 
ing of  the  muscles,  the  wife's  head  went  up,  and 
the  parson  knew  she  meant  to  die  game.  For 
one  hour  she  faced  the  ordeal  of  many  eyes. 


52  In  tHe  Service  of  tKe  King 

Travel-stained  and  spent,  in  the  midst  of  those  in 
evening  dress,  she  fought  the  unequal  fight,  and 
won.  None  but  the  parson's  ear  could  detect, 
beneath  the  laughter  and  the  play  of  words,  the 
note  that  told  him  every  nerve  was  raw  and  the 
tension  stretched  to  snapping.  It  was  over,  at 
last,  and  the  house  that  was  to  be  their  home  for 
thirteen  years  was  left  to  them. 

As  the  parson  looks  back  upon  those  years,  he 
feels  as  if,  from  a  point  outside  of  life,  he  were  look- 
ing at  himself.  He  believes  more  firmly  now  than 
when  he  uttered  it,  the  paradox  of  his  farewell  to 
his  people:  "You  are  going  away  and  I  shall  stay 
here.  All  that  is  best  in  me  has  been  given  to 
you;  and  what  I  am,  you  have  helped  to  make. 
The  lessons  you  have  taught  me  I  shall  try  to 
teach  those  in  the  city;  and  my  life  and  all  its 
meaning  is  the  trust  I  leave  with  you." 

This  town  must  ever  be,  in  the  truest  sense,  his 
home;  for  here  his  children  were  born;  here  sorrow 
led  him  into  the  undiscovered  country  and  taught 
him  a  new  language,  stripping  life  of  every  tinsel 
trapping  and,  in  the  presence  of  his  dead,  showing 
him  the  true  values.  It  was  here  he  learned  the 
phrase,  which  his  friends  say  he  has  used  so  often 
that  it  is  peculiarly  his  own:  "The  worth-whiles 
of  life." 


The  Town  Ministry  53 

The  parson  soon  found  the  larger  field  to  which 
he  had  come  was  an  illusion.  The  church  building 
was  larger;  the  choir  a  real  joy;  but  the  congrega- 
tion a  fixed  quantity  from  the  beginning.  The 
town  had  been  visited  again  and  again  by  the 
travelling  evangelist,  and  every  man,  woman,  and 
child  drawn  at  some  time  into  the  religious  vortex. 
There  were  few  unattached  people  in  the  town, 
and  the  tribal  spirit  was  strong.  A  man  must  do 
his  work  within  the  tribe  of  his  birth  or  choice. 
The  parson  faced  the  situation  squarely.  He  had 
no  intention  of  deserting  again.  He  was  going  to 
serve  the  King  here.  Did  this  mean  that  for  the 
rest  of  his  life  he  was  to  minister  to  a  church  of 
one  hundred  and  fifty  members,  that  could  be 
added  to  only  by  birth,  or  the  occasional  recruit, 
bringing  ?.  letter  of  transfer?  He  had  no  taste 
or  talent  for  proselytizing.  Was  this,  then,  the 
end  toward  which  his  struggles  and  strivings  had 
brought  him — to  preach  to  that  little  band  for 
the  rest  of  his  life?  His  world  shrank  to  a  prison 
house.  He  was  rector  of  a  church,  and  suddenly 
he  felt  that  this  title  did  not  define  his  duties  to  his 
King.  It  shut  him  up  in  a  world  smaller  than  that 
in  which  the  King  moved.  He  knew  that  some 
new  truth  was  coming  into  his  life,  for  he  had 
become  conscious  of  a  great  need;  and,  even  in 


54          In  tKe  Service  of  tKe  Hing 

those  days,  he  had  learned  to  call  his  doubts  and 
dissatisfactions  his  "growing  pains.*'  While  he 
tarried  for  the  vision,  which  he  knew  would  come, 
he  began  to  make  some  spiritual  experiments. 
They  seemed  to  him  to  be  in  a  way  distinctly 
clerical  extras.  He  was  the  rector  of  a  church, 
but  he  would  try  to  be  the  King's  minister  to  that 
community.  The  other  ministers  in  the  town, 
guarding  their  tribal  interests,  were  also  in  the 
service  of  the  King,  and  he  would  know  them,  not 
casually,  but  intimately.  If  he  believed  he  had  a 
message  from  the  King  to  men  and  was  debarred 
from  delivering  it,  because  he  could  not  speak  the 
language  of  the  tribe,  then  he  would  seek  out  the 
prophet  of  the  tribe  and  convince  him  that  there 
was  a  message  from  the  King,  and  persuade  that 
prophet  to  deliver  it  to  his  own  tribe. 

Memory  takes  him  back  to  that  night  when,  on 
a  street  corner  in  the  rain,  he  pleaded  with  the 
haruspex  of  a  hostile  tribe  to  climb  with  him  the 
hill  of  vision.  "Let  me  lend  you  a  book  that  will 
show  you  what  I  am  driving  at,"  said  the  parson. 
"To  what  Church  does  the  author  belong?" 
asked  the  haruspex.  The  parson  replied  that  he 
did  not  know,  or  care.  The  haruspex  seemed 
utterly  astonished,  and  asked:  "Do  you  mean  to 
say  that  you  would  read  a  book  without  knowing 


XHe  Town  Ministry  55 

the  Church  affiliation  of  the  author?"  The  par- 
son answered:  "If  a  turbaned  Turk  should  bring 
me  a  message  of  truth,  I  should  know  he  came  to 
me  from  the  Most  High  God.  God  chooses  His 
messengers;  not  I."  As  one  ashamed,  the  harus- 
pex  promised  to  come  and  get  the  book.  This  was 
the  beginning  of  a  new  life  for  that  man.  Truth 
became  something  to  win  and  to  share;  not  a 
labelled  treasure-box  which  he  was  set  to  guard. 
The  parson  began  to  take  courage.  He  had 
filed  through  a  captive's  fetters  and  set  a  strong 
man  free.  He  had  done  more — he  had  stumbled 
upon  a  basis  of  unity.  It  had  been  there  all  the 
time,  but  unrecognized.  It  was  the  assumption 
that  every  man  who  calls  himself  a  Christian  is  in 
the  service  of  the  King,  and  loyalty  to  the  King 
demanded  that  he  help  the  helper.  This  assump- 
tion has  found  him  fighting  in  strange  company 
— Russellite,  Roman  priest,  Baptist  preacher, 
Christian  Scientist,  Presbyterian,  Methodist,  and 
the  doughty  street  warriors — the  parson  has  talked 
of  our  King  and  His  cause  to  all  of  them.  He  has 
cut  the  bitter  word  from  the  manuscript  of  a 
theological  disputant,  saying:  "I  don't  think 
your  theology  is  right,  but  I  am  not  responsible 
for  that.  I  know  the  bitterness  of  your  invective 
is  hurtful  to  the  Cause  and,  as  a  fellow-soldier,  I 


56  In  tHe  Service  of  tKe  Ring 

protest."  He  has  claimed  their  Christ  as  his  own 
Christ,  and  talked  of  the  common  Cause.  He  has 
never  tried  to  make  an  Episcopalian  out  of  any  one 
of  them,  but  he  has  never  failed  to  try  to  share  every 
truth  that  has  come  to  him  as  a  member  of  the 
Church,  as  freely  and  as  eagerly  as  vedette  whis- 
pers to  vedette  the  meaning  of  the  noises  and  lights 
in  the  camp  of  the  enemy.  He  has  avoided  as  a 
plague-stricken  district  the  field  of  religious  con- 
troversy, and  talked  ever  of  the  King's  business. 
So  long  as  he  could  keep  the  King  the  centre  of 
interest,  the  question  as  to  which  of  them  should 
be  greatest  could  not  arise.  He  was  the  rector  of 
a  church,  but  neither  a  book  nor  a  stately  ritual 
could  ever  interpret  the  Church  to  that  town,  for 
they  would  not  read  the  book,  nor  witness  the 
ritual,  and  he  was  determined  to  make  the  Church 
a  power  in  that  community.  The  only  possible 
interpreter  of  its  spirit  must  be  a  life  of  depth, 
of  breadth,  of  freedom,  and  of  tolerance.  He 
determined  to  bring  the  Church  out-of-doors, 
and  see  if  it  could  speak  the  common  speech  of 
men  without  the  aid  of  printed  book  or  chanted 
music.  Consciously  and  persistently  he  strove  to 
share  what  God  had  given  him.  He  preached 
during  those  thirteen  years  nearly  two  thousand 
sermons  to  the  little  band  of  Episcopalians 


The  Town  Ministry  57 

gathered  in  the  church  building;  but  he  talked 
of  the  King  and  service  under  Him  to  every  man 
of  every  tribe  who  would  give  him  a  hearing.  The 
derringer  talks  in  the  drug  store  were  a  part  of  the 
day's  work,  and  he  has  listened  to  the  confession 
of  a  sin-stricken  soul  as  he  sat  in  a  boat  waiting 
for  the  fish  to  bite. 

But  it  was  not  all  sunshine.  Many  a  day  the 
hands  hung  listless  and  the  doubt  would  come 
— settling  down  like  a  fog  and  making  his  world 
again  a  narrow,  chill  prison.  He  longed  at  times 
to  get  out  of  it  all,  and  in  the  big  city  take  a  part 
in  the  big  battle  there;  but  every  time  he  went  to 
the  city  and  talked  to  ministers  there,  he  came 
away  dazed.  They  had  neither  time  for  the  study 
of  the  big  problems,  nor  apparent  interest  in  the 
challenge  to  battle  that  was  flaunted  by  vice  at 
every  turn  of  the  head.  One  and  all,  they  seemed 
to  be  intent  on  one  thing — to  save  the  Church. 
The  parson's  brain  got  into  a  strange  muddle. 
Was  he  mistaken  about  the  meaning  of  all  the 
battle  talk  and  soldier  speech  in  the  history  of  the 
founding  of  the  Kingdom?  Was  he  mistaken  as 
to  what  was  the  glory  of  an  army.  He  had  never 
gotten  over  the  impression  of  what  it  was  to  be  a 
real  soldier  that  he  had  got  from  an  old,  yellow 
letter  that  the  mother  once  gave  him  to  read. 


58  In  tKe  Service  of  tKe  King 

It  was  from  her  brother,  a  boy  soldier  in  the  Con- 
federacy, and  was  written  from  the  Wilderness. 
"I  have  not  taken  off  my  boots  in  a  fortnight. 
We  have  been  in  seventeen  fights  and  skirmishes 
between  the  Maryland  line  and  Spottsylvania 
Court  House ;  and  yesterday,  only  the  sergeant  and 
myself  answered  to  our  names  when  the  roll  of 
Company  F  was  called.  The  rest  are  dead,  or 
captured."  A  thousand  times,  through  his  boy- 
hood and  young  manhood,  the  parson  had  pictured 
the  glory  of  being  a  member  of  that  Company  F. 
He  always  pitied  the  two  survivors.  They  had 
been  saved,  and,  somehow,  it  seemed  to  cast  a 
stain  upon  the  record  of  the  company.  Was  the 
Church  organized  to  save  itself?  This  question 
came  to  him  again  and  again. 

It  was  during  these  days  that  the  parson  became 
a  fisherman.  At  first,  fishing  was  only  an  occa- 
sional break  in  the  routine  of  life,  but  gradually  it 
became  a  passion.  At  first,  he  argued  with  him- 
self that  he  needed  the  recreation.  This  argument 
sufficed,  till  he  found  that  recreation  and  duty  had 
a  frequent  struggle  for  precedence,  and  duty  did 
not  always  take  first  place.  Finally,  he  faced  the 
matter  squarely.  He  went  fishing,  not  because 
he  needed  it,  but  because  he  loved  it.  If  he  took 
off  too  much  time,  it  was  dissipation.  This  truth 


The  Town  Ministry  59 

was  pressed  home  sharply  one  day,  as  he  was  get- 
ting into  his  buggy  to  drive  to  the  fish  pond.  The 
paddle  and  the  bait  bucket  told  the  story  of  his 
intended  outing.  As  he  got  to  the  gate,  a  poor 
old  drunkard,  whom  he  had  a  short  time  before 
inveigled  out  of  a  bar-room  and  helped  to  his  home, 
was  passing.  As  usual,  he  was  well  under  the 
influence  of  liquor.  He  stopped  the  parson,  and 
steadying  himself  by  a  grip  on  the  parson's  shoul- 
der, he  said:  "Parson,  I  want  to  ask  you  a  ques- 
tion. Every  man  has  his  weakness,  hasn't  he?" 
"Yes,  I  suppose  he  has,"  answered  the  parson. 
A  drunken  grin  was  on  his  face  as  the  old  fellow 
continued:  "That's  what  I  think.  Every  man 
has  his  weakness;  I  drink  whiskey,  but  I  don't  go 
fishing.  And  you  go  fishing,  but  don't  drink 
whiskey.  I  have  my  weakness  and  you  have  your 
weakness.  It's  about  the  same  thing,  isn't  it?" 


II 


THE  parson  spent  too  much  time  in  fishing, 
perhaps ;  but  his  memory  at  least  is  unregenerate ; 
for  he  looks  back  upon  that  time  spent  in  fishing 
as  among  the  golden  hours  of  life.  He  learned  to 
know  the  woods  and  waters.  He  knew  every 
hole  of  mink  and  otter  in  many  miles.  He  knew 
the  hillside  where  the  first  arbutus  bloomed.  He 
violated  the  game  laws  by  shooting  muskrats  by 
moonlight,  and  argued  questions  of  theology  with 
a  fine  old  preacher  of  another  Church,  who  was 
such  an  enthusiastic  fisherman  that  he  would 
put  on  a  small  hook  and  fish  in  the  bait  bucket 
while  the  bacon  was  being  fried  for  dinner.  The 
parson  still  contends  that  fishing  is  the  one  demo- 
cratic sport.  He  likes  fishing  for  the  same  reason 
that  Pat  likes  a  street  fight.  "I  dearly  love  a 
street  fight/'  said  Patrick,  "for  in  a  street  fight, 
one  man  is  just  as  good  as  another,  and  sometimes 
a  blamed  sight  better."  He  has  prayed  for  all 
sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  and  fished  with  them, 
too;  and  he  has  seen  a  reprobate,  whom  no  man 

60 


The  Town  Ministry  61 

would  trust  for  a  quarter,  turn  the  boat,  so  that 
the  other  fellow  could  get  the  best  fishing.  Such 
a  man  only  lacked  training  and  opportunity  to 
become  a  hero. 

There  were  many  days  when  the  parson  seemed, 
even  to  himself,  to  be  doing  nothing  at  all.  Cer- 
tainly, there  were  no  results  that  could  be  tabu- 
lated in  the  Diocesan  Journal;  though  he  strove 
to  maintain  the  only  ritual  (the  translation  he 
found  one  day  in  Coleridge)  that  ever  won  his 
whole-hearted  admiration;  "Pure  ritual  and  un- 
defiled  is  to  visit  the  fatherless  and  widows  in  their 
affliction,  and  to  keep  himself  unspotted  from  the 
world."  During  the  thirteen  years  of  his  ministry 
in  town,  sorrow  came  to  almost  every  home  of  his 
people,  and  the  closest  ties  of  friendship  that  have 
bound  his  life  to  others  were  knit  by  the  blind, 
groping  hands  of  wounded  love  under  the  shadows 
of  human  loss.  Whatever  the  mocker  of  God's 
plan  may  say,  the  fact  remains  that  pain  is  the 
greatest  builder  in  the  world. 

There  were  times  when  the  frail  humanity  in 
him  hungered  for  the  word  of  commendation. 
Sometimes  he  craved,  in  spite  of  all  that  he  had 
learned  in  bitterness  of  soul,  to  be  able  to  say  to 
all  the  world:  "This  has  the  King  done  through 
me."  It  was  during  these  years  that  he  learned 


62  In  tHe  Service  of  tKe  King 

what  he  called  "his  lighthouse  philosophy."  The 
keeper  of  the  lighthouse  does  not  launch  any  ships, 
it  is  true,  but  he  keeps  many  a  good  ship  from  going 
to  wreck.  The  light  shines  farther  than  the  keeper 
can  see,  and  brightest  when  he  cannot  see  at  all. 
Two  things  he  has  got  to  remember — to  keep  the 
light  burning,  and  never  get  in  between  the  light 
and  the  darkness  he  is  set  to  lighten.  His  teacher 
here  was  the  one  who  had  been  the  companion 
and  counsellor  of  his  youth.  Men  have  given 
many  names  to  their  mothers.  The  parson  called 
his  mother  "The  Strawberry,"  for  did  not  old 
Isaak  Walton  say:  "God  might  have  made  a 
better  fruit  than  the  strawberry,  but  He  just 
didn't?" 

The  best  that  is  in  the  Saxon  is  a  sense  of  justice, 
and  the  best  that  is  in  the  Celt  is  his  imperishable 
youth ;  and  the  mother  was  a  Saxon-Celt.  It  was 
not  until  he  was  far  enough  away  from  it  all  to 
get  the  sense  of  proportion  that  he  understood 
the  meaning  of  those  solemn  moments  in  his  boy- 
hood, when  the  busy  mother  laid  down  her  needle 
to  sit  as  judge  and  arbiter.  Sometimes,  the  tear- 
stained  and  angry  litigants  were  all  her  own  boys. 
Sometimes,  the  court  was  held  in  the  backyard, 
and  one  of  her  boys,  with  flushed  face  and  clenched 
fist,  faced  a  playmate,  whose  sullen  silence  told 


THe  Town  Ministry  63 

that  he  felt  certain  the  judgment  would  be  ren- 
dered by  a  biassed  court.  Sometimes,  it  was  an 
angry  dispute  between  her  boys  and  a  negro 
servant.  It  was  as  one  against  whom  the  verdict 
was  often  rendered  that  the  parson  got  his  first 
suggestion  of  life's  hardest  lesson:  "Justice  does 
not  take  sides  with  people ;  justice  takes  sides  with 
right."  There  were  two  rulings  of  this  court 
that  often  come  to  his  mind:  " Fight,  if  you  must, 
but  no  sulking ;  better  a  bruised  eye  than  a  scowl- 
ing face";  and  "The  punishment  must  ever  be 
greater  if  the  wrong  has  been  done  to  a  smaller 
boy,  or  to  a  servant  whose  menial  position  makes 
him  defenceless."  This  was  the  Saxon  in  her. 
Whatever  her  sons  may  come  to  doubt,  they  know, 
for  they  have  seen,  the  splendid  majesty  of  justice. 
They  must  believe  that  right  is  right,  and  to  be 
served,  no  matter  what  the  cost  to  self. 

But,  after  all,  the  Saxon's  is  a  sombre  world,  and 
the  mother's  world  was  a  world  of  light.  Every 
Irishman  has  the  power  at  will  to  make  his  eye 
a  convex  mirror,  and  see  the  world  of  common 
things  reflected  there  in  strange  grotesque.  This 
was  the  mother's  gift.  She  taught  her  children 
to  laugh,  and  led  the  laughter.  So  sure  was  she 
of  the  healing  power  of  laughter  that,  even  when 
sorrow's  arrow  struck  deep  and  the  wound  did 


64          In  tHe  Service  of  tHe  King 

inward  bleed,  the  lips  were  never  too  hard  set  to 
keep  back  the  smile;  and,  somehow,  the  Healer 
wrought  the  double  miracle,  for  her  own  wound 
was  staunched  as  she  ministered  to  the  smaller 
hurts  of  childhood's  hour.  The  parson  still  calls 
her  his  encyclopaedia  of  useless  information,  his 
last  book  of  reference  when  all  others  fail  him. 
It  makes  no  difference  whether  the  quest  is  the 
names  of  the  three  wives  of  Felix,  or  the  name  of 
the  English  general  who  wrote  Peccavi  when  he 
captured  Sind,  he  is  sure  the  mother  knows. 
People  who  have  lived  are  a  living  interest  to  her; 
and  she  who  would  gossip  about  the  possible 
domestic  complications  in  Solomon's  household 
resolutely  refused  to  discuss  her  neighbour's 
affairs,  on  the  ground  that  it  was  not  yet  a  closed 
incident,  and  hence  none  of  her  business.  A 
Spanish  proverb,  or  a  Latin  pun,  jumped  suddenly 
into  a  discussion  of  the  servant  problem,  making 
even  that  desolate  waste  blossom.  When  some  one 
suggested  to  the  old  French  teacher,  worn  out 
with  labour  and  ill-health,  that  he  should  rest,  the 
eager  old  man  replied:  "Rest?  How  can  I  rest? 
I  have  work  planned  out  for  two  hundred  years." 
The  parson  when  he  read  the  story,  knew  that 
he  had  found  a  spiritual  kinsman  to  the  mother; 
for  the  mother,  at  seventy-five,  is  studying  a  new 


THe  Town  Ministry  65 

language  with  a  zest  and  eagerness  that  youth 
might  envy.  One  day,  when  the  parson  and  the 
mother  were  chumming  it,  and  nibbling  the  bitter- 
sweet rind  of  some  precious  truth,  whose  kernel 
they  could  not  reach,  the  mother  said :  "  I  have  had 
a  strange  experience.  I  have  not  been  able  to 
sleep  lately,  and  one  night,  as  I  lay  there,  wide 
awake,  I  thought  I  would  try  to  see  if  I  could  say 
my  prayers  in  Latin.  I  missed  a  word  here  and 
there,  but  found  I  could  do  it.  Then  I  said  them 
in  French,  and  then  in  Spanish.  It  was  just  an 
experiment,  and  not  at  all  a  pious  exercise.  But, 
somehow,  I  got  into  the  habit  of  doing  it  every 
night.  Suddenly,  it  dawned  on  me  that  I  had 
stumbled  on  a  new  truth.  When  I  began  my 
prayer  in  French,  I  found  I  was  praying  to  the 
good  God,  and  I  realized  that  in  my  English 
prayer  I  had  unconsciously  been  asking  God  to 
be  good ;  and  when  I  prayed  in  Latin,  I  found  that 
there  was  a  majesty  in  the  face  of  the  good  God 
that  I  had  missed  seeing  before;  and  when  I 
prayed  in  Spanish,  a  subtle  sense  of  a  new  value 
in  the  Father's  love  came  to  me.  It  was  as  if 
the  spiritual  inheritance  of  three  great  peoples 
had  been  added  to  the  gift  of  what  my  own  fore- 
fathers gave  to  me  in  their  language."  Then,  for 
the  first  time,  the  parson  realized  the  promise 

5 


66    In  tHe  Service  of  tKe  King' 

hidden  in  the  mission  of  the  Church.  Man  cannot 
know  God  in  His  fulness  till  all  the  world  knows 
Him.  He  had  tried  to  know  Matthew's  Christ 
and  Mark's  Christ  and  Luke's  Christ  and  John's 
Christ,  but  now  he  knew  he  would  never  know 
the  Christ  till  he  knew  the  world's  Christ. 

It  was  the  mother  who  broke  into  a  monologue 
of  the  parson's  on  Church  unity,  by  saying: 
"Wait  a  moment,  son.  There  is  too  much  lost 
motion  in  that  sort  of  talk  for  it  to  carry  you  to  the 
end  you  seek.  As  long  as  you  talk  about  the 
Church  and  the  Churches,  you  beg  the  question; 
but  the  trouble  lies  deeper  than  mere  words.  It 
lies  in  the  way  you  think  about  it.  Suppose  you 
substitute  in  your  thought  on  this  subject,  Christ 
and  the  Cause,  for  the  Church  and  the  Churches. 
If  you  do,  I  believe  the  conclusion  which  you  will 
reach  will  be  an  action,  not  an  argument.  As 
long  as  you  confine  yourself  to  talk,  the  case  is  a 
hopeless  one ;  for  every  disputant  speaks  a  different 
tongue  and  he  convinces  no  one  but  himself. 
Action  is  the  only  universal  language  for  it  is  a 
reality  which  needs  no  confusing  symbol  to  inter- 
pret itself.  Most  of  the  arguments  I  ever  heard 
were  only  elaborate  excuses  for  not  performing  a 
very  simple  duty." 

This  talk  with  the  mother  sent  the  parson  back 


TKe  To-wn  Ministry  67 

to  his  task  with  a  new  ideal.  He  has  ever  been 
chary  of  making  rules  for  other  people,  but  some- 
times he  made  one  for  himself.  The  rule  was 
hardly  more  than  a  programme  of  work  to  be  done, 
but  it  has  helped:  " Study  the  big  problems  all  the 
time,  but  never  skip  a  small  task,  for  one  of  those 
simple  duties  holds  the  key  to  the  big  problem." 
One  day  he  met  the  Baptist  preacher  on  the 
street.  They  were  good  friends,  for  the  parson  had 
initiated  him  into  the  mystic  Order  of  Fishermen, 
and  steadied  the  boat  while  he  struggled  with  his 
first  big  chub.  It  was  the  last  of  July,  and  the 
Baptist  preacher  was  going  away  the  next  Monday 
for  a  month's  holiday.  The  parson,  with  a  little 
shaking  of  the  knees,  said:  "I  want  you  to  do 
something  for  me  on  next  Sunday.  Tell  your 
people  for  me  that  while  you  are  away  I  should 
count  it  a  privilege  if  they  will  let  me  minister  to 
them  should  any  sickness  or  sorrow  come  to  them." 
The  preacher  was  deeply  moved,  and  said  he 
would  gladly  deliver  the  parson's  message.  On 
Monday  morning,  the  parson  was  sitting  in  his 
study,  when  one  of  the  members  of  his  church 
walked  in.  He  plunged  right  into  his  story:  "I've 
been  expecting  the  coming  of  Judgment  Day  all 
this  morning,  and  I  came  down  for  a  moment's 
talk  before  it  was  announced.  Have  you  heard 


68  In  tHe  Service  of  tKe   liing 

what  happened  at  the  Baptist  church  yesterday?" 
The  parson  replied  that  he  had  heard  nothing, 
and  his  friend  continued:  "Well,  the  Baptist 
preacher  delivered  your  message,  and  added: 
'I  gladly  commit  you,  my  people,  to  the  pastoral 
care  of  my  friend,  the  rector  of  St.  Paul's  Church.' 
If  that  isn't  a  preface  to  Judgment  Day,  it  is  a 
preface  to  something  bigger  still."  The  parson 
asked  him  what  he  would  do  if  his  next-door  neigh- 
bour and  friend  were  going  away  for  a  month  and 
had  stopped  to  say  good-bye.  Would  he  not  say: 
"Tell  the  madam  and  the  children  if  I  can  be  of 
any  service  to  them  while  you  are  away  to  call 
on  me?"  "Of  course,  I  would,"  he  replied. 
"Well,  all  that  I  did,"  said  the  parson,  "was  to 
raise  the  standard  of  Christian  unity  up  to  the 
level  of  the  common  courtesies  of  life."  The  friend 
went  away,  still  insisting  that  some  momentous 
event  was  about  to  shake  the  world.  When,  an 
hour  later,  the  parson  was  crossing  the  street,  he 
saw  an  old  fellow  rush  toward  him  from  the  side- 
walk. Not  waiting  to  shake  hands,  he  grabbed 
the  parson  in  his  arms,  and  hugged  him.  The 
man  was  an  old  huckster  in  the  market,  and  there 
were  tears  in  his  eyes  when  he  said:  "We  all  love 
you  for  the  message  you  sent  us  yesterday."  The 
next  Sunday  the  official  board  of  the  Baptist 


The  Town  Ministry  69 

church  attended  St.  Paul's  in  a  body,  and  on  the 
Sunday  after  nearly  half  the  congregation  were 
Baptists.  And  some  of  them  said  that  it  was  the 
first  time  they  had  ever  been  in  an  Episcopal 
church. 


Ill 


Down  on  the  James,  where  the  parson  used  to 
spend  his  holidays  as  a  boy,  and  where  he  first 
learned  to  know  and  love  the  glow  and  wonder  of 
burning  logs,  there  is  a  fire-log  lore  that  never 
found  its  way  into  print.  He  who  has  sat  in  some 
spacious  room,  from  whose  walls  be-rufHed  gentle- 
men looked  down,  and  watched  in  the  twilight  the 
big  drift-log  burning,  has  been  to  wonderland. 
There  are  greens  and  reds  in  the  driftwood  jets 
of  flame  that  no  artist  ever  put  on  canvas;  and 
along  the  burning  log,  in  glowing  fresco,  castles, 
and  strange  living  things,  bearing  a  likeness, 
now  to  man  and  now  to  beasts,  show  themselves. 
The  castles  loom,  the  weird  faces  grin  and  grimace 
for  a  moment,  then  crumble  into  ash;  but  even 
as  you  watch  the  crumbling  desolation,  unseen 
fingers  build  again  the  fleeting  world  of  glory  and 
of  gloom. 

The  which  is  an  allegory  that  will  help  explain, 
perhaps,  the  parson's  liking  for  the  company  of  the 
human  drift  that  the  winds  of  chance  and  the 

70 


The  Town  Ministry  71 

floods  of  ill-fortune  have  flung  at  his  feet.  The 
tramp,  the  wanderer,  the  beggar,  the  derelicts, 
have  ever  appealed  to  him  with  growing  power. 
Someone  has  said  that  kings  are  easy  to  paint,  for 
they  are  taught  to  pose  from  babyhood;  but  the 
skulking  figures  that,  with  lowered  head  and 
slouching  gait,  come  up  the  walkway  as  the  twilight 
deepens,  are  quite  a  different  task  to  limn.  One 
of  the  parson's  quests  was  to  find  his  way  into  the 
heart  of  the  derelict.  His  friends  had  laughed 
and  called  him  "fool"  when  they  knew  that  at  his 
table  and  in  his  study,  smoking  the  cigar  of  com- 
radeship, had  sat  every  type  of  failure  that  ever 
pointed  a  moral:  impostors,  ex-convicts,  drunk- 
ards, thieves,  victims  of  a  drug,  and  the  care-free 
adventurer,  whose  commissary  equipment  is  a 
tomato  can  and  a  short-stem  pipe.  He  has  re- 
duced his  method  of  dealing  with  these  to  a  well- 
ordered  system.  Start  with  the  hypothesis — 
sometimes  a  difficult  one — that  every  one  of  them 
is  at  bottom  a  human  being  like  yourself.  Give 
to  the  tramp  brevet  rank  as  a  gentleman,  so  long 
as  he  is  under  your  roof.  Wait  for  the  story  till 
after  he  has  left  the  dining-room.  He  can  eat 
with  his  head  down,  but  no  man  is  going  to  smoke 
through  a  whole  cigar  without  a  puff  or  two  toward 
the  ceiling.  A  man  is  like  a  horse.  If  he  is  down, 


72  In  tKe  Service  of  tKe  Ring 

you  have  got  to  get  his  head  up  before  he  can  rise. 
Until  he  gets  his  head  up,  his  struggles  are  futile. 
Once  get  the  head  up,  you  can  stand  aside,  for, 
unless  his  back  is  broken,  he  will  get  to  his  feet 
alone. 

Some  of  the  most  interesting  men  the  parson 
ever  knew  have  been  derelicts.  Stories  of  prison 
life,  stories  of  folly  and  crime,  pitiful  tales  of 
poverty  and  shame,  the  confession  of  the  wild 
abandon  of  passion  that  sent  the  wanderer  on  his 
way  with  the  mark  of  Cain  on  his  brow,  a  grim 
humour  that  mocked  at  despair,  and  a  strange 
philosophy  that  drew  content  out  of  wretchedness 
and  rags — the  parson  has  watched  it  all,  as  the 
fires  of  memory  were  kindled  in  the  driftwood  of 
the  world.  Half  of  it  was  lying,  perhaps,  but  the 
material  for  the  story  had  been  gathered  with 
bleeding  hands  in  the  waste  places  of  the  world. 
Sometimes  he  felt  the  story-teller  was  telling  the 
tale  of  another's  life,  and  not  his  own,  but  the 
parson  never  questioned  the  right  of  the  despoiler 
to  his  borrowed  robe  of  shame.  He  has  seen  hope 
show  its  radiant  face  just  for  a  fleeting  moment 
ere  it  crumbled  into  ash,  and  he  has  not  despaired. 
If  but  the  passing  touch  of  kindliness  could  stir 
the  dead  soul  to  even  a  fitful  breath  of  aspiration, 
he  knew  that  when  once  the  living  Christ,  incar- 


THe  Town  Ministry  73 

nate  in  the  life  of  all  who  call  Him  Lord,  shall 
walk  the  earth  again,  then  will  the  Saviour's 
hope  be  fulfilled,  His  purpose  come  to  wonderful 
fruition.  It  was  his  ministry  to  the  driftwood  of 
the  world  that  suggested  to  the  parson  to  study 
anew  the  mission  of  the  King.  To  his  glad  amaze- 
ment, when  he  read  the  words  in  Greek,  he  found 
that  the  King  had  said:  "I  am  come  to  seek  and 
to  save  that  which  has  gone  to  smash. " 

One  winter's  evening  the  parson  was  sitting  in 
his  study.  The  lamps  had  been  lit,  and  he  was 
reading,  when  the  bell  rang.  He  opened  the  door, 
and  saw  standing  there  a  well-dressed  stranger, 
who  asked  if  this  was  the  rector,  and  gave  his  own 
name.  The  parson  shook  hands  and  said  that 
he  was  glad  to  know  him.  The  man  replied: 
"You  little  know  what  I  am,  or  you  would  not 
say  that."  "No  matter  what  you  are,"  answered 
the  parson,  "it  will  not  prevent  you  from  getting  a 
welcome  here.  Come  in."  "Well,  sir,  I  don't  want 
to  come  in  under  false  pretences.  I  am  a  thief," 
replied  the  stranger,  still  standing  outside  the 
door.  "The  welcome  still  holds  good,"  answered 
the  parson.  "Come  in!"  The  man  began  his 
story,  but  the  parson  stopped  him.  "Wait  until 
after  supper,  when  we  can  have  the  evening  to 
ourselves."  The  parson  then  excused  himself  and 


74          I**  tKe  Service  of  tHe  King 

went  to  tell  the  wife  there  was  a  guest.  "We 
have  a  thief  downstairs  who  has  consented  to  take 
tea  with  us,"  he  told  her.  "All  right,"  she  an- 
swered, "I'll  be  down  in  a  moment.  I  can  stand 
for  the  thief,  but  I  am  glad  it  is  no  worse.  You 
know  you  might  have  captured  a  murderer  for  a 
table  companion." 

After  the  stranger  rallied  from  the  dazed  state 
into  which  he  seemed  to  have  fallen,  he  talked 
freely.  He  had  been  a  student  at  the  parson's 
old  college,  and  knew  many  people  who  were 
friends  of  the  parson  and  his  wife.  He  had  been 
a  lawyer  and  an  editor,  and  talked  about  his  work 
and  his  life  in  a  distant  city.  There  was  nothing 
during  the  meal  to  suggest  that  the  stranger  was 
not  an  honoured  guest.  When  the  parson  and  the 
stranger  were  back  in  the  study,  and  the  parson's 
long  pipe  was  aglow,  and  the  stranger  had  been 
persuaded  to  light  a  cigar,  the  story  came. 

It  was  the  old,  familiar  story  of  drink.  Months 
of  hard  work,  then  the  mad  craving  for  liquor,  and 
the  long  debauch.  The  last  one  had  lasted  through 
weeks,  till  he  reached  a  state  of  irresponsible  mad- 
ness. When  his  brain  cleared,  he  found  himself 
in  a  cell  in  a  jail  of  a  city  several  hundred  miles 
from  his  home.  He  was  told  that  he  had  forged  a 
check,  used  the  mails  for  fraudulent  purposes,  and 


THe  Town  Ministry  75 

stolen  and  sold  a  bicycle.  At  the  end  of  six 
months  he  had  been  set  free  on  a  technicality,  but 
faced  the  probability  of  being  arrested  again,  so 
had  fled.  Potentially,  he  was  a  fugitive  from 
justice.  "Have  you  no  family?"  asked  the 
parson.  "My  mother  is  living,"  he  answered; 
"but  she  did  not  write  to  me  while  I  was  in  jail. 
I  have  no  right  to  criticize  her,"  he  added,  "for 
I  have  broken  every  promise  I  ever  made  to  her, 
and  when  I  was  drinking,  I  have  stolen  the  very 
ornaments  in  her  parlour  to  pawn  for  drink.  She 
believes  I  am  a  hopeless  case,  and  I  believe  so 
too."  "What  are  you  going  to  do  now?"  the 
parson  asked.  "I  do  not  know,"  he  answered. 
"I  am  fleeing  from  the  face  of  man.  My  only 
hope  is  to  find  some  place  where  no  one  lives  who 
ever  saw  me  before.  An  old  acquaintance,  or 
one  who  was  once  my  friend,  is  now  my  worst 
enemy.  Without  any  warrant  for  so  doing,  I  am 
asking  you  to  give  me  money  to  make  my  flight 
possible." 

The  parson  depleted  his  shallow  exchequer, 
and  handed  him  a  $5  note.  "There  is  no  string 
to  this,"  he  said;  "you  can  do  with  it  what  you 
will.  If  you  believe  that  your  mother  is  right, 
and  that  your  own  opinion  of  yourself  is  right,  then 
you  will  probably  take  it  and  get  drunk.  If  you 


76  In  tHe  Service  of  tHe  King 

do,  I  shall  not  blame  you.  But  remember,  I  am 
a  messenger  of  the  Christ,  and  He  bids  me  tell 
you  that  you  are  not  a  hopeless  proposition,  that 
the  making  of  a  man  is  still  in  you.  It  is  on  His 
Word,  not  on  any  judgment  of  my  own,  that  I 
give  you  this  money."  They  talked  for  a  long 
time,  and  finally  the  man  arose  to  say  good-bye,  as 
he  was  to  take  a  night  train.  Up  to  this  point, 
the  parson  had  travelled  over  perfectly  familiar 
ground;  then,  suddenly,  he  was  ushered  into  a 
hidden  chamber  of  the  human  heart.  The  thief 
held  out  his  hand.  "I  thank  you  very  much," 
he  said,  "for  the  money  you  have  given  me.  I 
shall  not  try  to  thank  you  for  the  other  gift." 
''What  other  gift?"  asked  the  parson.  "The  gift 
of  life,"  he  answered,  as  his  voice  broke  with  sobs. 
"I  have  a  large  acquaintance  in  this  and  other 
States,  but  in  all  God's  universe  I  know  no  man, 
except  you,  who  would  have  asked  me  to-night  to 
sit  at  the  table  with  his  wife.  When  I  came  here, 
I  was  outside  the  pale  of  humanity;  I  had  ceased 
to  be  a  man.  When  you  made  me  your  guest, 
you  made  me  a  human  being  again.  There  may 
be  words  that  can  express  the  feeling  of  an  outcast 
from  the  race  when  he  feels  the  glow  of  human 
fellowship  again;  but  I  don't  know  the  words. 
Good-bye."  He  went  out  into  the  night,  and 


XHe  Town  Ministry  77 

two  days  later  the  parson  got  a  letter.  It  was 
very  brief:  "I  had  a  hard  fight  when  I  got  up- 
town. The  money  would  have  made  it  so  easy 
to  forget ;  but  I  won  out,  and  I  hope  yet  to  be  the 
man  God  meant  me  to  be." 


THE  CITY  MINISTRY 


THE  parson  had  entered  on  his  thirteenth  year 
in  his  town  ministry,  and  had  begun  to  have 
an  institutional  value  in  the  community.  The 
ministry  is  the  symbol  of  service,  but  the  content 
of  the  symbolism  is  a  living  thing;  hence  a  parson 
becomes  a  community  asset  only  after  the  testing 
years  have  made  his  life  an  open  book.  During 
the  first  years,  he  argues  for  the  cause;  when  he 
is  known  and  judged  of  men  he  becomes  the  argu- 
ment, good  or  bad,  for  the  cause.  The  parson 
has  known  men  to  refuse  to  go  again  to  a  church 
because,  as  they  said:  "I  have  hunted  with  that 
preacher,  and  he  is  at  bottom  thoroughly  selfish. 
He  cannot  teach  me  anything."  It  was  that  sort 
of  rough  comment,  heard  around  the  camp-fire, 
that  illumined  for  the  parson  the  meaning  of  the 
King's  words,  "Ye  are  the  light  of  the  world." 
It  was  the  parson,  and  not  his  sermon,  that  was 
the  message  to  men.  The  realization  of  this  truth 

78 


The  City  Ministry  79 

has  made  him  utterly  wretched,  when  at  the  end 
of  day  he  looked  back  and  found  that  some  fool- 
ish vanity  had  marred  his  work,  or  some  petty 
selfishness  or  shrinking  cowardice  had  wrought  an 
injury  to  the  cause.  It  was  a  poor  sermon  and  a 
weak  argument  that  he  had  given  to  men  that 
day.  It  was  the  feebleness  of  his  week-day  ser- 
mons, not  of  his  Sunday  utterances,  that  haunted 
him.  The  story  of  old  Dr.  Johnson  and  the  beg- 
gar often  came  to  his  mind:  "Who  are  you?" 
asked  Dr.  Sam  of  the  beggar.  "I  am  a  poor  old 
struggler,"  came  the  answer.  "Would  you  mind 
shaking  hands  with  me,  madam?"  said  the  doctor, 
lifting  his  hat.  "That's  just  what  I  am,  a  poor 
old  struggler."  Like  a  flagellant  of  old,  he  was 
tempted  to  beat  into  his  brain  and  heart  the  words 
he  was  forever  saying  to  himself:  "Be  true  to  the 
King.  At  any  cost  be  true." 

One  morning  he  looked  up  from  his  desk  to  see 
the  Bishop  and  two  strangers  coming  up  the  walk- 
way. The  Bishop  was  the  spokesman:  "We  have 
come  to  tell  you  that  the  quiet  days  of  your  min- 
istry are  over.  You  have  had  years  in  which  you 
found  leisure  to  study  and  to  dream  dreams. 
These  men  have  come  to  offer  you  a  task  too  large 
for  one  man,  but  one  man  is  all  that  can  be  spared 
for  the  work.  Will  you  undertake  the  hard  task?  " 


8o  In  tKe  Service  of  tHe  Ring 

It  was  like  a  blow  in  the  face;  but  there  seemed 
no  escape,  and  the  parson  answered:  "I  will 
undertake  the  work  if,  after  a  talk  with  the  vestry, 
they  will  accept  me  as  a  leader." 

The  call  to  the  large  church  had  come,  and  it  did 
not  quicken  a  pulse  beat.  There  was  no  sense  of 
exhilaration,  and  the  parson  knew,  as  he  looked 
upon  the  calm  of  his  inner  life,  that  the  chastening 
vision  of  the  King  that  had  come  to  him  as  a 
young  deacon  had  taught  him  thoroughly  the 
utter  unseemliness  of  vanity  when  his  name  was 
called  out  to  go  and  find  a  way. 

The  parson  met  the  vestry  of  the  city  church. 
He  wonders,  sometimes,  if  they  did  not  have  bad 
dreams  that  night,  haunted  by  the  thought  that 
they  had  invoked  catastrophe  on  their  church  by 
insisting  that  the  parson  should  come  to  them. 
The  parson  returned  to  them  their  formal  call, 
and  told  them  that  they  were  released  from  any 
obligation  to  him.  He  tried  to  make  them  under- 
stand that  there  was  real  danger  of  a  sad  misfit; 
that  it  was  a  dangerous  experiment  to  transplant 
one  whose  life  had  been  spent  in  quiet  by-paths, 
into  the  hurry  and  strivings  of  the  city;  that  he 
had  neither  temperament  nor  talent  for  the  r61e 
of  the  dignified  ecclesiastic;  that  he  had  got  the 
habit  of  snapping  conventions  if  they  hampered 


THe  City  Ministry  81 

his  freedom;  that  he  had  startled  his  town  vestry 
by  preaching  repeatedly  on  the  street  corner  from 
a  wagon,  and  that  if  he  came  to  them,  it  would  be 
with  the  full  and  clear-cut  purpose  to  carry  what 
the  Church  stood  for  into  every  side-street  and 
back-alley  of  the  city,  and  that  if  they  would  not 
help  him  carry  it  there,  he  would  not  come. 

Even  when  the  parson  was  talking  to  the  vestry 
he  was  conscious  of  a  constitutional  weakness  that 
tempts  him  to  meet  every  crisis  of  his  life  by  making 
a  speech.  He  has  often  felt  that  he  belonged  to 
another  age,  the  age  of  the  monologists — those 
sapient  ones  who  wrote  pamphlets  when  they 
could  not  get  an  audience;  and  when  they  met  a 
lone  traveller,  held  him  with  a  glittering  eye  till 
the  tale  was  told.  Still,  when  one  has  grown 
accustomed  to  having  old  chums  greet  him,  after 
long  absence,  with  the  invariable  salutation,  ac- 
companied by  a  slap  on  the  back,  "Well,  you  old 
crank,  how  are  you?"  he  is  justified,  perhaps,  in 
the  effort  to  make  men  know  his  standard  before 
entering  into  a  relationship  as  intimate  and 
thorough-going  as  that  of  pastor  and  people. 
And  this  was  the  parson's  creed  of  service,  crude 
and  imperfect  it  may  be,  but  tested  by  sixteen 
years  of  striving  within  the  narrow  confines  of 
his  former  ministry. 

6 


82  In  tHe  Service  of  tKe  Ring 

When  the  parson  was  settled  in  his  new  home, 
he  found  himself  in  a  swirl  of  activities.  He 
became  at  once  the  helpless  victim  of  a  conspiracy 
of  kindness.  First  came  the  receptions  and  even- 
ings out.  He  and  his  wife  were  expected  once 
and  sometimes  twice  a  day  to  be  the  guests  at 
some  function.  In  the  old  familiar  intercourse 
of  his  town  ministry  he  had  been  accustomed  to 
drop  in  to  the  evening  meal,  and  put  his  own  chair 
to  the  table;  now  he  learned  the  new  art  of  per- 
pendicular eating.  Strange  food  served  in  lettuce 
leaves  was  his  daily  diet;  and  in  what  looked  to 
him  like  chicken  salad  he  discovered  malaga 
grapes  and  curious  confections.  He  was  forced 
to  wear  what  he  used  to  call  "his  other  clothes*' 
every  day ;  and  instead  of  sitting  down  to  a  square 
meal  of  talk,  he  had  to  partake  of  what  he  called 
"capsule  conversation"  (a  handshake,  a  smile, 
and  inanity  and  a  bow).  He  began  to  feel  as  if 
the  tissues  of  his  brain  were  being  picked  to  pieces. 
He  was  hopelessly  unfitted  for  this  kind  of  social 
manoeuvre  and  floundered  helplessly. 

Then  came  the  invitations  to  deliver  addresses. 
There  is  no  use  in  recording  the  number,  for  it 
would  not  be  believed.  He  addressed  every 
organization  known  to  our  modern  civilization, 
from  the  Bootblacks'  Union  to  the  Daughters  of 


The  City  Ministry  83 

Royalty.  Well  for  him  that  his  old  student 
habits  had  taught  him  how  to  work.  He  un- 
screwed the  bells  of  the  telephone,  locked  himself 
in  his  study,  and,  with  a  sort  of  blow-pipe  inten- 
sity, made  preparation  for  these  addresses.  The 
fact  that  he  strove  by  exacting  study  to  give 
direction  and  substance  to  these  addresses,  was 
recognized  as  a  tribute  to  the  generous  courtesy 
of  those  who  had  asked  his  counsel,  and  they  re- 
paid his  efforts  with  a  meed  of  praise  wholly  out 
of  proportion  to  their  worth.  He  began  to  feel 
the  thrill  of  that  subtle  intoxicant,  the  untem- 
pered  word  of  a  crowd's  flattery.  The  parson 
realized  that  he  was  entering  upon  a  phase  of  life 
new  to  him.  Whether  he  liked  it  or  not,  he  now 
had  to  deal  with  crowds.  The  one  demand  upon 
him  was  that  he  should  please.  At  first,  it  seemed 
to  him  a  meaningless  waste  of  time.  He  was  not 
a  candidate  for  public  applause,  and  the  brief 
experience  of  those  first  months  taught  him  that 
here  was  a  real  danger  of  mental  and  moral  deteri- 
oration. Yet,  if  he  meant  to  be  God's  minister 
to  that  community,  it  would  not  be  a  negligible 
asset  to  knit  to  himself  by  a  bond  of  common 
interest  the  various  groups  of  men  and  women  in 
the  city.  Having  decided  that  it  was  worth  while, 
he  tried  to  form  his  code  of  action.  He  would 


84  In  tKe  Service  of  tKe  Ring 

learn  to  take  the  labour  incident  to  this  sort  of 
work  as  a  recreation,  not  as  a  burden.  He  must 
be  sane,  and  study  to  win,  not  betray,  the  intel- 
ligence of  his  audience.  He  must  bear  in  mind 
that  he  who  tries  to  win  the  favour  of  the  crowd 
will  soon  be  tempted  to  pawn  his  honour  in  order 
to  save  his  winnings.  He  must  remember  that 
reputation  lives  in  the  crowd,  and  to  live  up  to 
his  reputation  meant  only  to  follow  the  crowd. 
If  he  hoped  to  lead,  he  must  live  beyond  man's 
estimate  of  him;  and  so  he  made  a  motto  for 
himself,  a  motto  which  he  tried  to  translate  into 
Latin,  but  failed:  "Keep  yourself  in  the  running, 
always  a  lap  ahead  of  your  reputation. " 

After  the  parson  ceased  to  be  a  novelty  and 
something  like  a  normal  existence  became  possible, 
he  tried  to  follow  the  advice  of  those  who  told  him 
that  an  ordered  mode  of  life  would  increase  his 
efficiency.  He  must  have  office  hours,  and  do 
his  pastoral  work  systematically.  Each  day  was 
to  see  a  carefully  prepared  programme,  and  the 
earned  hours  of  rest  could  be  set  aside.  After  a 
brief  trial  of  the  system  he  discarded  it  absolutely 
and  forever.  How  was  he  to  have  an  ordered 
life  when  the  sick  and  the  sorrowing  and  the 
needy  were  everywhere?  How  was  he  to  follow 
a  programme  when  the  coveted  opportunity  of 


The  City  Ministry  85 

intimate  converse  offered  itself  in  some  office  or 
sick-room  at  the  hour  when  the  fixed  order  of  his 
life  demanded  that  he  be  waiting  for  the  possible 
caller  at  his  home?  Pain  and  poverty  and  shame 
knew  no  schedule  of  hours,  and  these  called  to  him 
with  urgent  voice.  How  was  he  to  think  of  hours 
of  leisure  when  a  congregation  of  men  and  women 
listened  with  eager  intelligence  and  hungered  to  be 
taught  ?  How  could  he  rest  when  every  day  some 
new  task  beckoned  him  to  the  doing  of  it? 

The  problem  of  poverty  had  hardly  come  into 
his  life  before,  and  now  when  he  touched  it  in  the 
city,  he  almost  felt  as  if  the  Church  were  a  failure. 
The  physical  needs  of  the  destitute  were  being 
met  by  the  agencies  of  organized  charity;  but  the 
poor  themselves  were  unshepherded.  He  sud- 
denly realized  that  the  question,  "Why  do  not 
the  poor  go  to  church?"  was  a  foolish  question. 
The  only  question  with  which  he  must  concern 
himself  was,  "Why "does  not  the  Church  go  to  the 
poor?"  Again  he  found  himself  confronted  with 
the  fact  that  the  Church  was  too  busy  trying  to 
save  itself.  The  church  of  which  he  found  himself 
the  rector  was  making,  through  the  beautiful 
service  of  a  band  of  Christian  women,  some  effort 
to  touch  the  lives  of  the  needy  ones;  but  even 
those  who  gathered  in  the  parish  house  seemed  to 


86  In  tHe  Service  of  tKe  King 

feel  that  they  were  coming  to  man's  church,  and 
not  the  Father's  house.  Little  by  little  the  truth 
came  home  to  him  that  the  tabernacle  of  the 
church,  like  the  tabernacle  of  her  Lord,  must  be 
flesh,  and  not  stone  or  brick.  The  church  was  suf- 
fering from  house-mould.  Christianity  needed  sun- 
shine and  exercise.  Sometimes  as  he  pondered  over 
the  problem  he  was  tempted  to  pray  for  a  houseless 
church,  with  the  apostolic  substituted  for  the  Sarum 
usage;  with  only  the  outdoor  ritual  of  visits  to  the 
fatherless  and  widows,  and  the  worship  of  a  stain- 
less life  as  witness  of  loyalty  to  a  living  Lord. 

The  sacramental  teaching  of  the  Church  had 
never  quite  obscured  for  him  the  classic  meaning 
of  sacrament  as  the  soldier's  oath  of  allegiance, 
and  he  longed  to  keep  and  help  his  fellows  keep 
that  oath.  Whatever  he  may  have  failed  in,  he 
has  at  least  brought  it  to  pass  that  every  destitute 
man  or  woman  who  comes  seeking  help  from  the 
organized  charity  of  the  city  is  within  a  few  hours 
brought  into  touch  with  that  Christian  organiza- 
tion with  which  the  needy  one  has  ever  had  a  real 
or  nominal  or  inherited  connection;  and  he  looks 
to  the  day  when  there  shall  be  no  unshepherded 
poor  within  the  city. 

In  his  new  work,  as  in  his  town  ministry,  he 
found  the  derelict  was  his  teacher.  One  morning 


The  City  Ministry  87 

before  the  family  had  come  downstairs,  he  answered 
the  door-bell,  and  saw  an  old  woman  standing 
there.  He  knew  something  of  her  history.  She 
was  the  widow  of  a  painter  and  was  dependent 
now  on  charity.  It  was  not  her  first  visit,  but 
her  request  that  morning  was  new.  "I  come  to 
ask  you  to  give  me  something  good  to  eat.  I 
have  meal  and  meat,  but  when  I  looked  at  them 
this  morning  I  loathed  that  sort  of  food  and  could 
not  swallow  it."  The  parson  insisted  that  she 
should  come  into  his  study  and  talk  it  over. 
While  they  talked,  he  heard  the  servant  moving 
about  in  the  dining-room,  and  saw  that  breakfast 
had  been  brought  in.  He  asked  the  old  beggar 
to  come  in  to  breakfast,  and  assured  her  that  his 
wife  would  give  her  a  glad  welcome.  The  parson 
will  never  forget  the  look  upon  the  aged  face. 
Tears  were  in  her  eyes,  and  for  a  while  the  words 
would  not  come.  At  last  she  whispered  in  a 
choked  voice.  " Oh,  no,  sir;  I  could  never  do  that, 
never,  never ! "  No  persuasion  of  the  parson  could 
make  her  see  that  it  was  a  reasonable  proposition. 
The  whole  thing  seemed  to  her  incongruous  and 
out  of  the  question.  The  parson  gave  her  some 
food,  and  an  order  for  a  few  dainties,  and  she  left. 

After  breakfast,  the  parson  sat  down  to  write 
his  sermon;  but  the  face  of  the  old  beggar  woman 


88  In  tHe  Service  of  tKe  King 

kept  getting  between  him  and  the  page.  "What 
had  been  the  manner  of  his  life  that  the  wife  of 
the  painter  should  think  it  utterly  incongruous 
that  she  should  sit  down  at  the  table  of  the  servant 
of  the  Carpenter  ?"  This  was  the  question  he 
asked  himself.  He  knew  now  that  he  had  made 
a  grievous  mistake  somewhere,  and  he  took  up 
the  story  of  the  Master's  life  to  find  out  where 
he  had  failed.  He  found  therein  the  Master's 
words,  "Give,  and  men  shall  give  unto  you." 
And  then  he  read  that  other  promise,  "When 
thou  makest  a  feast,  ask  the  poor,"  and  thou  shalt 
be  blest  of  God.  He  knew  the  satisfaction  of  the 
fulfilment  of  the  first  promise.  Men  had  given, 
pressed  down  and  running  over,  the  measure  of 
their  appreciation;  but  had  he  ever  been  even  a 
candidate  for  God's  blessing?  This  is  the  law  of 
life:  "Give,  and  man  shall  bless  you;  share,  and 
God  shall  bless  you."  He  saw  the  light;  but  it  re- 
vealed to  him  only  his  fetters.  No  matter  how  he 
strove,  the  barrier  between  the  poor  and  himself 
remained.  The  habit  of  the  life  called  Christian 
had  been  accepted  as  the  law  of  Christian  living, 
and  no  declaration  of  the  gospel  of  sharing  would 
ever  be  intelligible  to  the  unshepherded  ones  till 
the  habit  of  social  exclusiveness  be  branded  as  un- 
Christian  by  those  who  had  willingly  laid  it  aside. 


II 


The  parson  belongs  to  a  club  which  has  for  its 
qualifications  the  sole  requisite  that,  as  Henry 
Grady  says,  every  man  carries  his  sovereignty 
under  his  hat.  It  would  be  hard  to  find  a  gather- 
ing of  people  who  are  more  certain  of  their  grasp 
of  universal  truth,  or  more  ready  to  lay  a  lance  in 
rest  against  any  opposing  system.  Preachers, 
doctors,  lawyers,  scientists,  socialists,  professors, 
captains  of  industry,  and  editors,  are  among  them. 
When  the  paper  is  read  and  the  discussion  opened, 
only  he  who  is  prepared  for  a  swash-buckler  f£te 
dares  show  his  head.  For  many  years  the  parson 
has  argued  it  out  with  the  masters  of  the  world. 
He  has  been  worsted  a  thousand  times,  but  he 
has  learned  a  little  of  the  art.  He  is  always  a 
parson,  and  fights  for  his  cause.  He  has  learned 
not  to  be  frightened  by  great  names.  He  knows 
that  St.  Augustine  is  the  spiritual  ancestor  of 
Jesuit,  Presbyterian,  Baptist,  and  High  Church- 
man ;  that  Calvin's  logical  system  runs  so  smoothly 
that  its  great  non-sequitur  is  difficult  to  detect, 

89 


QO    In  tHe  Service  of  tKe  King 

because  its  premises  are  both  true,  though  unre- 
lated; that  the  man  who  finds  it  easy  to  prove 
everything  really  believes  very  little;  that  the  man 
with  the  complete  system  is  as  dangerous  a  guide 
as  the  special  pleader;  that  if  you  search  long 
enough  you  can  find  a  proof -text  for  any  political 
heresy  in  the  writings  of  the  versatile  Thomas 
Jefferson,  just  as  every  controversialist  in  theo- 
logy gets  his  sharpest  weapon  from  that  most 
quotable  of  all  sceptics,  St.  Augustine. 

The  most  interesting  disputant  he  knows  is 
the  omniscient,  militant,  German  trained  Ph.D., 
armed  with  a  heresy  that  bears  the  date  of  his  uni- 
versity degree.  His  train  of  thought  is  usually 
propelled  by  a  sort  of  negative  electricity,  which 
will  drive  the  wheels  only  backward.  From  inti- 
mate contact  with  them  the  parson  has  found  out 
that  "agnostic"  is  an  objective  and  not  subjective 
term.  It  means  that  the  owner  of  the  title  believes 
that  nobody  else  knows  anything.  Nothing  gives 
him  higher  joy  than  to  lay  violent  hands  upon 
some  aged  truth  clothed  in  the  garment  of  ancient 
speech,  and  tear  to  pieces  the  outer  garb  of  words, 
and  drive  into  the  limbo  of  lost  ideals  the  aged 
ruler  of  the  centuries.  His  quest  is  to  find  a  myth, 
which  is  to  him  the  one  creative  force  in  the  sphere 
of  mind.  Truth  is  the  barren  offspring  of  time, 


The  City  Ministry  91 

myth  the  one  goddess  of  the  dawn.  He  is  the  vice- 
gerent of  a  mysterious  power,  which  he  calls  science, 
the  Lord  of  the  material  universe.  His  Ph.D. 
confers  upon  him  a  grace  of  orders.  He  speaks 
with  a  note  of  infallibility  in  a  voice  strangely 
like  that  of  the  mediaeval  Church.  The  vice- 
gerent of  a  material  universe,  he  claims  lordship 
over  all  things  spiritual.  His  concept  of  law  in  the 
sphere  spiritual  is  modelled  after  the  Russian 
code,  which  defines  what  a  man  can  do  by  the 
gracious  favour  of  the  Czar;  and  all  things  not 
granted  explicitly  are  thereby  forbidden.  His 
logic  is  perfect  : 

"If  a  man  who  turnips  cries, 
Cries  not  when  his  father  dies, 
It  is  proof  that  he  had  rather 
Have  a  turnip  than  his  father." 

His  attitude  toward  theology  is  marked  by  a 
touch  of  pity.  His  voice  is  lowered  when  he 
explains  that  the  seeming  halo  round  its  hoary 
head  is  but  the  phosphorescence  of  decay.  He 
passes  from  the  four  walls  of  his  laboratory,  where 
the  chastened  elements  do  his  bidding,  out  into 
the  infinite  of  spirit,  and  does  not  doff  his  crown. 
He  has  proved  that  life  exists  only  within  certain 
degrees  of  heat;  therefore,  the  nearest  approach 


92          In  tHe  Service  of  tKe  King 

to  the  concept  of  a  Lord  of  life  is  heat.  He  has 
with  his  own  eyes  seen  the  frog  that  had  no  father, 
therefore  a  man  need  not  lift  his  eyes  from  earth 
in  order  to  seek  the  source  of  being.  He  has  found 
a  law  in  the  jungle  that  the  two  forces  that  rule 
there  are  cunning  and  strength;  therefore,  morality 
is  only  a  convention,  and  sacrifice  a  meaningless 
maiming  of  the  life. 

He  knows  to  a  nicety  the  source  of  the  atavistic 
terror  in  the  ululations  of  the  wolf,  but  the  croon- 
ing of  the  mother  to  her  babe  brings  no  message 
to  his  mind.  Behind  the  modesty  of  his  humble 
title,  agnostic,  is  the  mental  arrogance  of  papacy. 
Affirming  that  God  cannot  be  known,  he  is  forever 
proclaiming  what  God  is  not,  with  the  intimate 
knowledge  of  close  acquaintance.  The  constant 
student  of  phenomena,  he  denies  the  validity  of 
those  spiritual  forces  which  make  life  among 
men  a  possibility  to  him.  Unconsciously  he  is 
repeating  the  ancient  folly  of  the  Church  in  trying 
to  solve  the  equation  of  life  with  only  two  factors. 
For  centuries  the  Church  posited  God  and  a  man, 
and  the  problem  of  life  was  insoluble,  for  it  left 
out  mankind  or  the  world.  The  agnostic  posits 
man  and  the  world,  and  leaves  out  God,  and  finds 
the  equation  a  surd,  as  meaningless  as  the  square 
root  of  a  minus  quantity. 


THe  City  Ministry  93 

The  club  is  a  valuable  incident  in  the  parson's 
routine  existence.  He  knows  that  no  argument 
of  his  under  such  conditions  can  carry  conviction ; 
but  'tis  a  good  school  of  fence,  and  he  understands 
history  a  little  better  now  that  he  has  watched  the 
ancient  errors  of  the  Church  being  repeated  in  the 
name  of  science.  He  understands  a  little  better 
than  he  did  that  for  man  truth  is  not  a  proposition 
but  a  life.  He  has  learned  to  accept  God's  nam- 
ing of  life's  Trinity,  "Thou  and  God  and  thy 
neighbour." 

Of  course  the  parson  has  met  the  other  type,  the 
honest,  reverent  seeker  for  the  keys  to  the  locked 
chambers  of  nature,  the  man  who  in  humble 
loyalty  to  his  chosen  work  struggles  ever  to  keep 
his  mind  sensitive  to  the  approach  of  light;  who, 
moving  in  a  world  of  material  things,  seeks  to 
know  only  facts;  to  whom  science  is  a  just  and 
gracious  sovereign,  claiming  the  fealty  of  his  intel- 
lect; the  man  who  gazes  out  into  the  infinite  of 
spirit,  and  frankly  says:  "This  is  to  me  the  great 
unknown.  The  training  of  the  laboratory,  with 
its  test-tubes  and  its  microscope,  has  not  fitted 
me  to  judge  of  that  which  cannot  be  confined  and 
is  intangible  and  imponderable.  When  you  talk 
to  me  of  spiritual  data,  I  tell  you  frankly  that  the 
sensitized  tissues  of  my  brain  have  been  trained 


94  In.  tHe  Service  of  tHe 

to  respond  only  to  the  call  of  the  senses.  I,  be- 
cause my  life  has  been  spent  in  the  service  of  man, 
the  child  of  earth,  cannot  grasp  the  meaning  of  the 
talk  of  man,  the  child  of  God.  Sequence  I  see 
and  law,  but  the  law  is  but  the  nature  of  the  thing 
I  see.  Whence  came  this  law  I  do  not  know.  I 
am  like  the  men  who  travelled  with  the  Christians' 
saint  toward  Damascus,  the  light  I  see,  but  the 
voice  I  cannot  hear."  For  such  men  the  parson 
has  an  honest  admiration.  Their  courage  quick- 
ens his  pulse-beat.  Their  loyalty  gives  his  own 
allegiance  new  forms  of  expression.  Their  rever- 
ence for  the  tested  law  has  taught  him  that  rever- 
ence is  not  a  thing  of  bowed  head  and  bended 
knee,  but  the  necessary  expression  of  a  loyal  mind 
in  the  presence  of  truth.  Their  humility  has 
chastened  his  own  vanity,  and  their  devotion 
typified  his  own  desire. 

One  day  the  rector  of  another  church  in  the 
city  asked  the  parson  to  consider  with  him  the  ad- 
visability of  planting  a  new  congregation  in  the 
suburbs.  To  this  rector  such  a  movement  would 
mean  the  maiming  of  his  own  church,  for  every 
member  was  apparently  needed  to  do  the  work  of 
the  body,  and  a  withdrawal  meant  in  every  case 
an  amputation;  but  the  rector  in  this,  as  in  every 
test  in  which  the  parson  saw  him  tried,  put  his 


TKe  City  Ministry  95 

own  interest  at  a  negligible  quantity  and  planned 
for  the  Cause  alone.  With  the  inspiration  of 
such  an  example  the  parson  sat  down  to  study  the 
question.  To  the  other  church  it  would  mean  the 
loss  of  a  few  much-needed  men  and  women,  but 
to  the  church  under  the  care  of  the  parson  it  would 
mean  the  loss  of  a  large  group  who  represented 
the  present  strength  and  future  growth  of  the  con- 
gregation, those  just  entering  upon  the  maturity 
of  life  with  their  young  children,  born  to  the  sweet 
proprietorship  of  beautiful  homes. 

But  to  the  parson's  mind  a  new  church  was 
needed,  and  the  field  ought  to  be  occupied.  It 
was,  however,  a  new  experiment,  where  instinct 
rather  than  knowledge  was  his  guide.  The  church 
people  were  summoned  to  a  conference,  and  to  this 
conference  many  others  who  lived  in  that  section 
of  the  town  came.  The  parson  and  the  rector  of 
the  other  church  urged  their  people  to  break  the 
bonds  that  bound  them  to  their  old  congregational 
life,  and  to  enter  upon  a  new  life  of  their  own. 
If  the  parson  had  any  misgivings  as  to  the  wisdom 
of  their  action,  those  doubts  were  dispelled  by  the 
whispered  comments  of  the  visitors  present.  They 
said  with  a  note  of  sadness,  in  which  there  was 
mingled,  however,  a  note  of  exhilaration:  "We 
never  realized  what  a  church  meant  before.  To 


96  In  tKe  Service  of  tHe  King 

see  two  ministers  driving  from  the  fold  some  of  the 
choicest  of  their  flock,  and  telling  them  it  is  their 
duty  to  depart,  is  a  sight  so  strange  that  we  never 
thought  it  among  the  possibilities  of  life.  We 
have  been  taught  to  struggle  for  the  upbuilding 
of  our  congregation.  If  there  is  a  church  which 
can  see  beyond  its  own  congregational  life,  we 
want  to  know  it  better  than  we  do." 

The  sequel  of  this  incident  (and  the  parson  is 
persuaded  that  such  an  event  ought  to  be  an  inci- 
dent in  the  life  of  every  church)  was  striking  proof 
of  its  wisdom.  A  new  church  sprang  into  being, 
to  whose  open  doors  people  are  drawn  who  never 
knew  the  Church  and  her  ways.  The  church  of 
the  rector  who  began  the  work  has  rallied  from 
its  loss  and  entered  upon  larger  activities,  with  a 
higher  vision  of  service  and  joy  in  the  discovery 
of  unappreciated  powers  within  itself.  For  some 
months  within  the  mother  church,  the  story  of  the 
exodus  of  her  young  life  was  told  anew  at  every 
service ;  but  a  new  life  began  to  show  itself  in  every 
branch  of  congregational  activity.  Within  the 
year  the  vacant  places  were  filled,  and  lives  in 
which  undiscovered  or  unappropriated  powers  of 
service  had  lain  unutilized  were  sending  energy 
into  the  church  whose  need  of  them  had  just  been 
realized.  The  parson  is  persuaded  that  the  child- 


The  City  Ministry  97 

less  church  is  as  tragic  in  the  pathos  of  its  finality 
as  is  the  childless  home  of  man. 

As  the  parson  sat  for  three  weeks  in  Synod  Hall, 
and  followed  with  increasing  interest  the  life  of 
the  Church  struggling  for  expression,  he  realized 
as  never  before  the  splendid  vitality  of  the  Church 
he  loved.  He  had  dreaded  the  test,  for  the  great 
metropolis  was  to  him  the  symbol  of  material 
power.  The  very  bigness  of  the  buildings  was 
evidence  of  man's  daring  and  man's  strength. 
The  rush  and  rumble  of  the  city  were  to  his  pro- 
vincial ear  like  the  noises  of  nature  in  convulsion. 
The  teeming  multitudes  of  the  streets  seemed  to 
mock  the  efforts  he  was  making  to  bring  to  a 
knowledge  of  the  King  the  little  city  in  which  he 
lived.  The  problems  of  poverty  and  sin  were 
multiplied  a  thousand-fold,  and  God,  who  seemed 
so  near  to  him  as  he  ministered  to  his  own  little 
flock,  seemed  infinitely  distant  there  in  the  great 
city.  It  was  hard  to  retain  the  sense  of  spiritual 
values,  when  on  every  side  the  struggle  for  mate- 
rial things  absorbed  the  life  of  men.  The  Christian- 
ity he  knew  had  come  to  him  in  the  symbolism 
of  the  home,  and  he  found  it  difficult  to  associate 
the  ideal  of  home  with  the  crowded  dwellings  of 
the  poor  or  the  artificial  housing  systems  of  the 
well-to-do.  To  his  experience,  the  life  of  a  com- 


98  In  tKe  Service  of  the  King 

munity  had  been  in  the  home,  but  here  man's 
life  seemed  to  be  in  the  streets.  The  cynic's 
definition  of  man  as  the  trading  animal  came  to  his 
mind,  and  he  realized  that  until  man  recognizes 
that  commerce  is  God's,  he  cannot  be  saved.  He 
looked  at  his  fellows  in  the  hall,  and  wondered  if 
the  shadow  of  the  big  buildings  had  fallen  on 
them  too. 

As  the  days  passed  the  parson's  fear  subsided, 
for  the  New  York  Convention  was  the  triumphant 
assertion  of  the  transcendent  worth  of  spiritual 
things.  He  had  been  reared  among  a  people  to 
whom  loyalty  is  the  first  of  virtues,  and  the  fierce 
loyalty  of  those  who  stood  to  guard  the  heritage  of 
the  Church  filled  him  with  admiration.  What 
that  heritage  was,  became  more  and  more  a  con- 
fused conception  to  him  as  the  strife  of  words 
went  on.  Both  sides  were  in  deadly  earnest,  and 
brother  fought  against  brother.  Each  claimed  to 
be  the  loyal  son  and  each  demanded  the  right  to 
be  sole  guardian  of  the  life  and  honour  of  the 
Church.  The  very  intensity  of  every  man's 
purpose  gave  a  reality  to  the  struggle.  None 
could  question  the  candour  and  the  courage  of 
those  who  flung  their  claims  to  heirship  into  the 
face  of  a  hostile  majority,  a  majority  that  shrank 
to  a  timid  minority  at  the  first  taunt  of  disloyalty. 


The  City  Ministry  99 

One  fact  stood  out,  and  that  was,  that  every  type 
of  temperament  was  represented  there.  The 
Church  was  clearly  a  family,  and  not  a  cult;  for 
a  cult  is  a  temperamental  group,  and  a  family, 
the  unity  amid  variety. 

As  day  after  day  the  struggle  went  on,  the 
parson  began  to  dread  a  victory  for  either  side. 
He  was  as  much  a  partisan  as  any;  but  he  asked 
himself  whether  there  was  in  him  the  spiritual 
capacity  either  to  use  wisely  the  fruits  of  victory, 
or  to  serve  with  fidelity  under  the  rule  of  a  system 
hostile  to  the  habit  of  his  mind  and  life.  It  was 
then  that  he  first  put  to  himself  the  question, 
"What  is  the  meaning  of  the  struggle?  What  are 
we  striving  to  do?"  The  answer  to  this  question 
came  with  startling  clearness:  "For  three  weeks 
the  chosen  representatives  of  the  Church  have 
fought  with  the  fierceness  of  strugglers  in  the 
arena  in  order  to  save  the  Church."  The  answer 
frightened  him,  for  it  was  the  same  that  had  come 
when  he  sought  the  reason  for  the  Church's  failure 
to  bring  sweetness  and  light  into  the  scattered 
homes  of  his  first  field  of  labour  in  the  country. 
It  was  the  same  answer  that  had  explained  to  him 
why  Christianity  wasted  its  strength  in  the  petty 
strivings  of  village  jealousy.  It  was  the  same 
answer  that  he  had  found  written  large  on  every 


ioo         In  tKe  Service  of  tKe  King 

rival  meeting-place  of  Christians  in  the  town. 
It  was  the  same  answer  that  had  explained  to  him 
the  presence  of  the  multitude  of  unshepherded 
ones  in  the  city. 

The  Church  was  seeking  to  save  itself.  As  the 
parson  pondered  the  words  there  in  Synod  Hall 
the  long-delayed  vision  came  to  him.  He  leaped 
to  his  feet  to  speak;  but  well,  perhaps,  for  the 
cause,  he  was  denied  recognition.  God  will  one 
day  vouchsafe  to  a  larger  soul,  with  hands  more 
fit  to  bear  it,  His  message  to  His  Church.  "He 
that  loseth  his  life  for  My  sake  shall  find  it." 
That  is  the  King's  message  to  His  Church  as  it  is 
to  every  soldier  in  the  line.  The  Church  does  not 
exist  in  order  to  save  itself.  Its  one  mission  is 
to  carry  out  the  King's  will.  The  Church  exists 
to  save  the  world.  The  Church  is  His  Body,  and 
that  Body  must  be  broken,  offered  with  the  glad- 
ness of  willing  sacrifice  in  order  that  men  may  live. 
Its  seamless  robe  must  be  stripped  from  it,  and 
its  vesture  parted.  Its  splendid  history  must  be 
made  a  common  heritage.  Its  compact  organiza- 
tion must  be  dissolved,  so  that  in  open  formation 
there  may  be  place  for  every  soldier  to  find  a  way 
up  the  steep  ascent.  Its  unity,  transcending  any 
bond  of  local  or  inherited  tradition,  must  be 
grounded  in  loyalty  to  Christ  alone,  and  the  Church 


The  City  Ministry  101 

must  fling  itself  without  reserve  against  the  forces 
of  evil,  unheeding  what  its  fate  may  be.  This  is 
the  Church's  destiny.  Better  that  the  Church 
should  lose  its  life  fighting  for  the  Christ  in  regions 
a  thousand  miles  beyond  where  Ingle  died  in  far- 
off  China,  and  find  it  amongst  the  redeemed 
millions  of  the  East,  glorified  by  sacrifice  and 
transformed  by  experience,  than  to  waste  its 
strength  in  struggles  at  home  in  the  futile  effort 
to  save  itself.  God's  purpose  is  larger  than  the 
Episcopal  Church,  though  it  may  be  granted  to 
that  Church  to  make  that  purpose  clear  to  the 
world. 


Ill 


Somebody  has  said  that  a  Russian  consists  of 
three  parts :  body,  soul,  and  passport.  Be  this  as 
it  may,  it  is  certain  that  every  Virginian  consists 
of  man,  and  gun,  and  a  faithful  negro  friend  to 
whom,  in  spite  of  all  fourteen  amendments  to 
the  Constitution,  his  white  friend  is  still  lord  and 
master.  The  parson's  third  part  was  named  Bill, 
and  like  Gunga  Din,  he  was  white,  clear  white 
inside.  The  parson  was  not  the  best  shot  in  the 
world,  but  Bill  never  lost  heart.  When  the  bag 
was  empty  at  sunset  he  would  still  insist:  "  You'se 
sure  goin'  to  git  somethin'  on  the  way  home." 
As  a  final  proof  of  his  belief  that  something  would 
show  up,  he  would  say:  "Cap'n  (for  some  occult 
reason  he  always  called  the  parson  "Captain"), 
I'll  promise  to  eat  anythin'  you  kill  'ceptin'  a 
snake."  One  afternoon,  when  Bill  had  paddled 
many  miles  and  not  a  single  mallard  had  been 
seen,  he  prodded  the  parson's  waning  hope  with 
the  usual  promise.  Just  then,  the  parson  caught 
sight  of  a  big  barn  owl,  perched  on  the  dead  limb 

102 


The  City  Ministry  103 

of  a  tall  pine.  He  fired,  and  the  bird  fell.  "  There 
is  your  supper,  Bill,"  he  said,  "I  hold  you  to  your 
promise."  Bill  looked  at  the  big  owl  dubiously. 
"I  ain't  never  heard  of  anybody  eatin'  an  owl, 
but  if  it  can  be  done,  I'se  gwine  to  do  it."  Next 
day  the  parson  met  Bill,  and  inquired  if  he  had 
kept  his  promise.  "I  honest  tried  to,  Cap'n. 
I  sot  down  to  pick  dat  owl,  and  worked  on  'im 
for  an  hour.  I  was  knee- deep  in  feathers  when 
I  got  through,  but  I  ain't  never  found  no  owl. 
He  warn't  thar.  Them  feathers  growed  right 
out  of  de  bones.  No,  sir,  I  swar  it,  the  owl  hisself 
warn't  thar."  Bill  has  gone  to  the  nappy  hunting- 
grounds,  but  when  at  night  the  wind  howls  and 
the  cold  creeps  under  the  blankets,  the  parson 
knows,  even  in  his  sleep,  that  the  ducks  are  coming 
to  their  refuge  in  the  marshes,  and  like  a  nodding 
hound  he  too  hunts  in  his  dreams,  and  Bill  is  with 
him  again. 

The  parson  has  always  been  a  collector.  He 
has  gathered  arrowheads,  birds'  eggs,  stamps, 
counting-out-rhymes,  and  picked  up  Minie  balls 
from  an  old  battle-field;  but  Bill's  story  of  his 
attempt  to  eat  the  owl  gave  him  a  new  idea.  For 
many  years  now  he  has  been  a  collector  of  owls. 
Owl  is  the  genus,  and  the  species  are  many.  He 
has  collected  owl  books,  owl  sermons,  and  has  a 


IO4        In  tKe  Service  of  tKe  Iling 

long  list  of  people  who,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
they  vote  or  want  to  vote,  are  really  only  owls. 
He  has  what  he  believes  to  be  some  almost  per- 
fect specimens.  He  has  picked  till  the  room  itself 
seemed  full  of  feathers,  but  "the  owl  hisself  warn't 
thar."  And  this  is  the  test  of  a  perfectly  de- 
veloped owl.  The  owl  is  a  natural  ponderer.  He 
shuts  his  eyes  to  facts  and  then  begins  to  ponder 
the  riddle  of  the  universe.  The  parson  has  one 
specimen  which  he  keeps  apart  from  the  rest. 
There  was  no  dearth  of  feathers;  the  picking  took 
many  hours,  and  was  renewed  from  day  to  day; 
but  in  the  end,  the  owl  "was  thar."  And  by  the 
same  token,  he  was  not  an  owl  at  all.  The  parson 
was  looking  out  of  his  study  window,  and  saw 
him  coming, — tall,  gaunt,  walking  with  shoulders 
bent  and  head  thrust  forward,  looking  with  intense 
vision,  as  if  he  expected  something  suddenly  to 
materialize  in  the  open  spaces.  He  was  plainly 
the  problem  man.  Even  as  he  came  up  the  walk- 
way, the  parson  could  see  his  hands  working  ner- 
vously. Sometimes  for  a  second  the  long  fingers 
rested  tip  to  tip,  and  then  they  would  interlace 
and  he  would  twist  them  as  if  tying  a  knot.  The 
parson  understood  it  all  afterwards.  The  man 
was  a  master  mechanic  and  an  inventor,  and  all 
his  life  his  hands  had  interpreted  his  thoughts. 


THe  City  Ministry  105 

As  soon  as  he  began  to  talk  the  fingers  were  busy; 
they  were  never  still.  But  it  was  his  face  that 
told  the  story.  It  was  the  face  of  one  who  lived 
indoors,  bleached  like  a  prisoner's,  and  seamed  with 
deep  lines,  with  one  furrow  like  a  gash  between  the 
bushy  brows.  The  deep-set,  grey  eyes  kindled 
to  intensity  as  he  talked.  His  great  beard  had 
once  been  red,  but  was  flecked  now  with  grey. 
It  was  the  finely-textured  beard  that  had  never 
known  the  touch  of  razor,  and  the  grey  mingled 
with  the  red  looked  like  ashes  on  a  burning  log. 
As  he  stood  there  at  the  study  door,  trying  to 
explain  the  meaning  of  his  visit,  the  parson,  who 
had  kept  a  book  of  people  for  twenty  years,  knew 
that  he  had  found  a  new  type.  "I  have  come," 
he  said,  "on  a  strange  mission.  I  am  looking  for 
words.  I  have  been  to  the  libraries  and  searched 
their  shelves  in  vain.  At  last  they  sent  me  here 
to  you.  I  want  to  make  myself  understood,  and 
they  told  me  you  were  a  teacher  of  men.  I  do 
not  come  looking  for  ideas.  I  have  my  message; 
but  the  men  to  whom  I  give  it  do  not  understand. 
I  want  words,  simple  words,  strong  words,  words 
that  carry  and  stick  in  men's  brains,  words  they 
will  not  forget.  Is  there  no  book  where  I  can  find 
such  words?"  The  parson  made  the  old  man  sit 
down,  and  then  he  lit  his  long-stemmed  council 


106         In  tKe  Service  of  tKe  Ming 

pipe  before  he  made  reply.  The  parson's  pipe 
has  long  served  a  double  purpose.  Smoking  is 
the  most  conciliatory  of  all  the  serious  occupations 
of  man,  and  the  lighted  pipe  tempers  the  dogmatic 
air  that  is  the  bane  and  blight  of  all  counsellors. 
The  pipe  transforms  the  functionary  into  a  friend, 
and  creates  that  level  of  intimacy  along  which 
confidence  travels  with  never  a  jolt.  The  pipe 
brings  calm,  and  under  its  spell  the  taut  muscles 
of  the  over-wrought  are  relaxed.  The  pipe  frees 
the  poor  slave  of  time  from  his  serfdom  to  the 
clock,  for  life's  span  becomes  a  matter  of  un- 
measured pipe-lengths.  The  clock  may  nick  its 
notches  in  the  passing  hour,  but  to  him  who  watches 
the  circling  smoke  ascend,  time  has  ceased  to  be 
attended  by  the  noisy  huzzy  whose  one  aim  is  to 
hurry.  The  old  man's  fingers,  which  had  been 
moving  like  shuttles  while  he  stood,  were  resting 
now  on  their  tips  as  he  watched  the  parson  light 
the  council  fire.  When  the  pipe  began  to  draw, 
and  smoke-rings  hovered  in  the  air,  the  old  man's 
fingers  began  once  more  their  restless  tattoo.  He 
was  growing  impatient.  "The  book,"  he  said. 
"Surely  there  must  be  such  a  book."  "There  is 
such  a  book,"  replied  the  parson,  "and  you  have 
passed  it  by  a  thousand  times.  It  is  called  Mother 
Goose"  The  old  man  rose  from  his  chair,  and 


XHe  City  Ministry  107 

glared  at  the  parson  in  sudden  anger.  "You  are 
mocking  me.  I  came  to  you  for  help,  and  you 
are  trying  to  show  me  up  as  a  fool."  The  parson 
waved  the  old  man  back  to  his  seat,  and  said: 
"Listen.  I  am  going  to  repeat  some  of  the  words 
of  the  book: 

1  Simple  Simon  met  a  pieman  going  to  the  fair, 
Said  Simple  Simon  to  the  pieman,  "  Let  me  taste 

your  ware." 
Said  the  pieman  to  Simple  Simon,  "  Show  me  first 

your  penny," 
Said  Simple  Simon  to  the  pieman,  "  Indeed  1  have 

not  any."  * 

I  have  repeated  four  lines, — every  word  in  them  is 
a  part  of  the  vocabulary  of  every  man  you  know. 
They  stick  in  the  brain  like  cockle  burrs  in  a  cow's 
tail.  Not  only  the  words  stick,  but  the  story  they 
tell  sticks.  You  see  it  all:  the  simpleton,  the 
pieman,  the  pies,  even  the  empty  pocket,  and  you 
will  never  see  another  pieman  or  an  idiot  boy  that 
the  story  will  not  come  back  to  you.  For  you, 
that  pieman  will  never  die,  and  every  fool's  name 
is  Simon. 

"The  story  of  the  man  in  the  moon,  who  burned 
his  mouth  upon  some  cold  pease  porridge,  will  give 
your  hearers  more  knowledge  of  the  physical 
conditions  in  the  moon  that  a  two-hours  lecture 


io8         In  tKe  Service  of  tHe  Ring 

on  astronomy.  You  know  it  is  so  cold  up  there 
that  if  the  old  gentleman  whose  fat  face  we  see 
in  the  moon,  should  attempt  to  eat  what  you  left 
of  yesterday's  apple-dumplings,  it  would  be  so 
much  hotter  than  what  his  regular  fare  is  that  the 
first  spoonful  would  make  him  howl  with  pain. 
What  you  have  got  to  learn  is  that  words  are  only 
labels,  and  a  man's  vocabulary  is  the  list  of  names 
on  his  stock  of  experience.  You  might  as  well 
give  him  a  lot  of  empty  boxes  or  bottles,  as  to 
talk  to  him  in  words  whose  meaning  he  does  not 
know.  Don't  dress  the  shepherd  boy  in  the  war- 
rior king's  armour.  Give  him  a  sling-shot,  and 
help  him  find  the  smooth,  round  stone." 

For  several  pipe-lengths  the  old  man  and  the 
parson  talked  of  words ;  and  when  he  left  he  asked 
if  he  might  come  again.  He  came  often  after  that, 
and  their  talk  ate  the  heart  out  of  many  a  pro- 
ductive morning.  The  old  man  was  morbidly 
candid.  "Remember,"  he  said,  "I  come  by  your 
invitation,  and  I  have  no  claim  upon  your  time. 
I  am  not  a  Christian.  I  believe  in  psychology, 
but  I  have  no  theology.  This  is  the  only  Creator 
I  know,"  and  he  touched  his  brow,  and  the  pliant 
fingers  began  their  weaving  of  invisible  things. 
"All  right,"  said  the  parson,  "we  will  talk  with 
that  understanding.  I  have  a  theology,  and  claim 


THe  City  Ministry  109 

kinship  to  a  Maker  of  my  mind.  You  refuse  to 
posit  God.  Pour  in  the  grist,  and  we  will  begin 
to  grind. "  Again  and  again  as  they  talked 
the  parson  would  say:  "Back  to  your  side  of  the 
line.  You've  gotten  on  God's  side."  And  the 
old  man  would  struggle  to  restate  his  answer  to 
the  riddle  and  to  make  man  the  measure  of  all 
things. 

The  old  man  was  a  reformer.  He  was  in  search  of 
a  method  or  means  by  which  to  re-make  the  world 
of  men.  The  parson  has  known  many  reformers, 
but  never  one  to  whom  his  purpose  was  dearer.  "I 
am  an  old  man,"  he  said,  "and  I  must  hurry.  If 
I  cannot  find  the  way  I  must  invent  one.  Man  has 
solved  the  other  problems,  he  can  solve  this  one. 
The  answer  is  not  physical  force,  for  it  must  act 
on  mind.  If  I  can  only  find  the  law,  and  fix  it 
in  a  phrase  so  that  it  can  drive  the  mind  of  men. 
That  is  the  reason  I  must  leave  out  the  God  of 
whom  you  talk.  There  must  be  no  unknown 
quantities  in  the  answer  to  the  world's  need.  I 
have  read  books  till  I  am  almost  blind,  but  they 
do  not  help."  "What  sort  of  books?"  asked  the 
parson.  "Books  on  wages,"  he  answered,  "books 
on  labour  and  capital,  books  on  government.  I 
have  found  books  which  helped  me  to  see  more 
clearly  what  I  already  knew,  but  no  books  which 


no        In  tHe  Service  of  tKe  King 

helped  me  to  make  the  other  man  see — the  man 
who  does  the  wrong." 

"I,  too,  have  read  these  books,"  said  the  parson, 
"and  even  when  they  satisfy  my  intelligence  I 
feel  their  schemes  are  futile;  for  they  deal  with 
men  as  things,  not  persons.  The  equilibrium 
they  establish  is  hopelessly  unstable;  for  it  holds 
only  as  long  as  men  are  full-fed.  They  make 
hunger  and  cold  the  worst  of  human  ills.  They 
make  the  strong  share  with  the  weak  under  threat 
of  the  law's  coercion,  forgetting  that  law  is  only 
the  weapon  of  the  strong.  They  leave  the  world 
an  armed  camp  still.  The  only  laws  that  interest 
me  deeply  are  interpretative,  not  coercive.  I  am 
more  concerned  with  motives  than  with  measures. 
The  law  of  the  pack  can  never  be  the  code  of  man. 
It  will  take  man  at  his  highest  efficiency  to  estab- 
lish a  social  equilibrium ;  and  man  reaches  that  effi- 
ciency only  in  the  service  of  a  cause  for  which  he 
will  gladly  sacrifice  himself.  What  you  have  to 
prove  is  the  worth  of  humanity,  not  the  rights  of 
man.  Men  argue  and  contend  about  rights;  but 
they  surrender  in  the  presence  of  a  worth  they 
cannot  deny.  To  my  mind,  the  whole  problem  is 
to  establish  a  ground  for  the  assumption  of  human 
brotherhood.  If  every  man  is  an  individual 
creator,  and  there  is  none  higher,  then  the  prob- 


The  City  Ministry  in 

lem  is  insoluble ;  and  had  the  world  never  heard  of 
God  it  would  have  to  postulate  Him  in  order  to 
begin  the  solution  of  the  problem." 

Such  was  ever  the  manner  of  their  talk:  each 
flying  his  kite  in  the  storm,  with  the  key  to  the 
strong  box  of  his  inmost  thought  tied  to  it,  hoping 
that  some  lightning  flash  from  out  the  unknown 
might  seal  the  confirmation  of  his  guess. 

One  afternoon  a  brother  parson  and  teacher  of 
philosophy  in  a  college  was  in  the  study  when  the 
old  man  came.  The  professor  rose  to  leave,  but 
the  parson  whispered:  "Wait,  you  will  never  see 
another  like  him."  The  old  man  never  got  very 
far  away  from  his  favourite  theme,  and  he  soon 
had  the  universe  by  the  ears,  shaking  it,  and  de- 
manding an  answer  to  his  questioning.  He  hurled 
queries  at  the  professor  which  could  be  answered 
only  by  a  treatise.  Finally,  he  said:  "  You 
men  who  believe  in  God,  sometimes,  I  almost  feel 
you  are  on  the  right  track.  Though  if  you  are,  you 
make  small  use  of  your  power.  Why  don't  you 
change  the  world?  I  know  little  of  your  be- 
lief. My  father  had  argued  God  out  of  the 
universe  before  I  was  born,  and  there  never  was 
a  God  in  my  home,  even  as  a  child.  But  there  is 
something  in  man,  I  know  not  whether  it  be  his 
strength  or  his  weakness,  which  tempts  him  to 


H2         In  tKe  Service  of  tHe  King 

make  a  god  for  himself.  May  I  tell  you  a  story 
of  a  man  whom  I  know  well?"  Then  he  told  this 
tale.  Never  once  did  he  forget  and  speak  as  if 
the  story  were  a  chapter  from  his  own  life;  but 
more  than  once  he  rose  and  pointed  his  long  finger 
to  a  corner  of  the  room  as  if  the  thing  of  which 
he  talked  were  close  at  hand.  His  voice  quivered 
with  the  tense  passion  of  his  emotion,  and  his  hand 
shook  as  if  a  present  horror  held  him  gripped. 

"There  was  a  man  who  once  lived  in  this  town, 
a  man  of  the  people.  All  his  long  life  he  had  toiled 
with  his  hands.  He  was  a  mechanic.  He  knew 
the  sufferings,  the  needs,  the  shame,  the  injustices 
borne  by  his  fellow- toilers.  He  had  known  days 
of  plenty,  when  for  a  time  he  was  tempted  to  forget 
the  things  that  he  had  seen.  He  had  known  days 
of  scarceness,  when  day  by  day  he  bartered  all 
the  comforts  of  his  home  for  bread,  until  at  last 
he,  with  his  wife  and  child,  had  watched  the  very 
beds  on  which  they  had  slept,  still  warm  with  the 
heat  of  their  own  bodies,  carried  off  to  pay  debts; 
and  he  and  they  stood  empty-handed  in  the  empty 
house,  helpless  as  a  babe  in  the  desert,  forgotten 
by  a  moving  caravan.  But  even  then  his  was  a 
more  favoured  lot  than  that  of  many  of  his  fellows, 
for  he  was  a  master-workman,  and  among  the 
first  to  be  called  when  the  strong  ones  flung  to 


The  City  Ministry  113 

the  starving  multitude  the  blessed  or  cursed  privi- 
lege of  toiling  like  slaves  to  keep  the  reservoir  of 
wealth  filled  to  the  brim.  All  through  the  years 
of  toil  a  passion  like  a  blight  was  on  the  man,  ever 
to  find  a  better  way  of  doing  his  task.  Now  it  was 
a  better  drill,  now  a  new  device  to  make  the  fric- 
tion less.  Again  and  again  he  saw  the  result  of 
many  a  night  of  toil  swept  like  all  the  rest  into 
the  stream  that  emptied  into  that  huge  reservoir 
from  which  he  could  not  drink.  He  listened  to 
the  murmurs  of  the  other  workmen,  joined  their 
clubs,  and  heard  wild  talk  of  torch  and  bomb, 
and  knew  he  could  never  follow  such  madmen. 
He  longed  for  order,  not  for  chaos,  in  the  world. 
There  must  be  some  way  to  stay  the  waste  and 
to  lessen  the  friction  of  the  world.  The  problem 
was  a  mechanical  one,  and  he  set  himself  the  task 
to  solve  it.  He  studied  the  conditions  of  his 
f ellow- workmen ;  he  read  and  thought  until  the 
hinges  of  his  brain  were  hot.  He  tried  to  teach 
the  men  about  him  to  value  and  to  demand  the 
decencies  of  life  in  home  and  shop.  He  must 
clean  the  machine  before  he  began  to  experiment 
with  it.  The  men  he  strove  to  help  called  him  a 
faddist  and  a  fool.  He  sought  the  employers  and 
demanded  that  they  give  the  men  these  things. 
The  employers  asked  if  the  men  had  sent  him,  and 

8 


H4         In  the  Service  of  the  King 

if  they  wanted  what  he  asked;  and  he  was  forced 
to  answer  *  No. '  They  too  thought  him  a  foolish 
dreamer  and  sent  him  away  ashamed.  He  did 
not  despair,  but  still  wrestled  with  the  scheme 
of  things,  ever  seeking  the  better  way.  He  gave 
himself  no  rest.  Body  and  brain  alike  he  drove 
with  rein  and  lash,  till  one  day  his  body  failed  him 
and  for  weeks  he  could  not  work.  For  the  first 
time  he  knew  despair.  The  struggle  seemed  utterly 
vain.  There  was  no  better  way.  Might  was  the 
only  right,  and  the  weak  were  made  to  be  preyed 
upon.  There  was  no  meaning  or  purpose  in  the 
world.  He  laughed  aloud  when  he  thought  of 
the  poor  fools  who  had  made  themselves  a  god. 
His  own  life  had  been  a  stupendous  folly  from  the 
first.  He  no  longer  thought  of  the  world  of  men. 
His  world  was  peopled  by  only  two  other  than 
himself — his  wife  and  child — and  he  found  himself 
snarling  at  them  if  they  crossed  for  a  moment  his 
selfish  will.  It  was  time  to  end  the  farce.  He 
would  die.  When  he  had  formed  this  decision  a 
sudden  calm  came  to  him.  He  planned  the  end 
and  took  a  joy  in  arranging  every  detail.  He 
found  a  thick  grove  standing  in  an  open  meadow, 
and  chose  within  it  the  very  spot  where  he  would 
die.  He  went  to  the  druggist  and  bought  a  drug 
he  knew  would  kill.  He  had  often  bought  chemi- 


The  City  Ministry  115 

cals  from  the  man,  and  they  gave  him  what  he 
wanted  without  question.     As  he  walked  for  the 
last  time  through  the  crowded  streets,  he  experi- 
enced a  strange  exultation.     He  could  feel  the 
weight  of  the  bottle  in  his  coat,  and  again  and 
again  he  touched  it  to  get  the  thrill  it  sent  through 
his  whole  body.     It  was  the  key  to  freedom  that 
he  held.     As  he  left  the  outskirts  of  the  town  and 
entered  the  open  field,  he  smiled  at  his  own  eager- 
ness, and  said  aloud:  'My  youth  has  come  back 
to  me.     I  am  a  boy  again.  '     But  even  as  he  spoke 
he  found  himself  stopped  as  by  an  unseen  hand. 
Between  him  and  the  grove  there  lay  the  bare 
carcass  of  a  horse.     The  birds  had  had  their  feast, 
and  now  only  a  lone  dog,  almost  as  gaunt  as  the 
dead  thing  whose  bones  it  gnawed,  was  there. 
The  joy  died  in  his  heart.     So  this  was  death,  the 
prize  he  sought!    The  sight,  loathsome  as  it  was, 
did  not  make  him  afraid.     He  was  but  more  eager 
to  get  rid  of  life  whose  way  led  only  to  the  carcass 
and  the  dog.     He  tried  to  turn  his  eyes  away,  but 
could  not.    Just  then,  the  dog  lifted  its  head  and 
saw  him.     It  dropped  a  bone  and  came  fawning 
at  the  man's  feet,  bringing  with  it  the  stench  of 
carrion.     The  man  kicked  the  foul  thing  from  him 
and  hurried  on ;  but  the  dog  followed  at  his  heels. 
He  found  a  stone  and  threw  it,  but  even  as  he 


Ii6         In  tHe  Service  of  tKe  King 

turned  to  go  on  the  dog  came  towards  him.  Then 
the  man  saw  a  stick  and  picked  it  up,  keeping  it 
close  to  him  till  the  fawning  hound  crept  near,  then 
he  struck  it  with  all  his  might,  and  the  dog,  yelp- 
ing with  pain,  fled  from  him  for  a  little  space; 
then,  whimpering  still,  crept  cringing  back.  Still 
holding  the  stick,  the  man  hurried  on,  not  looking 
back  till  he  reached  the  edge  of  the  wood;  then, 
when  he  looked,  the  dog  was  still  there.  He 
threw  the  stick  at  it  and  cursed  it,  but  the  dog 
would  not  leave.  When  the  man's  rage  had  spent 
itself,  he  stood  there  gazing  at  the  dog,  and  tried 
to  calm  his  throbbing  brain  that  he  might  think. 
He  had  pictured  the  scene  so  often  to  himself. 
He  would  lie  down  and  put  the  blessed  fluid  to 
his  lips,  then  sleep  would  come  to  him.  He  would 
sink  with  a  soft  surrender  into  nothingness,  would 
cease  to  be.  In  a  day  or  two  at  most,  some  passer- 
by would  find  him  sleeping  there,  and  take  what 
had  been  a  man  home  to  his  wife  and  child.  The 
wife  would  touch  his  brow  and  say:  "The  poor 
old  struggler  deserves  his  rest";  and  his  son  would 
say:  "He  was  so  tired  with  it  all.  It  is  well." 
But  now  he  pictured  another  scene.  The  presence 
of  the  carrion  birds  would  make  men  stop  to 
look,  and  they  would  find  the  mangled  body,  torn 
by  the  teeth  of  a  starving  dog.  They  would  take 


The  City  Ministry  117 

the  horrid  mass  and  lay  it  at  the  door  of  his  home, 
and  the  sight  of  it  would  make  his  wife  a  maniac 
and  drive  his  son  to  drink  or  madness.  He  could 
not  do  as  he  had  willed.  Death  was  denied  him. 
Through  all  the  planning  of  his  deed  there  had 
come  to  him  no  thought  of  God ;  but  now  he  asked 
himself  what  it  was  that  stayed  his  hand?  A  dog? 
He  called  the  dog  to  him,  and  looked  into  its  eyes 
and  talked  to  it:  'Can  it  be  that  the  God  I  have 
denied  and  mocked  at  all  my  life  is  here,  speaking 
to  me  through  you?  Can  it  be  that  the  God  whom 
men  call  Infinite  has  wrapped  Himself  within 
the  body  of  a  hound,  to  tell  me  that  the  life 
He  gave  is  not  mine  to  fling  away?  Chance, 
or  God,  or  some  unknown  directing  will,  thou 
art  greater  than  I,  and  to  thee  I  surrender. 
Oh!  possible  God  within  this  dog,  to  Thee  I  bow 
my  head. ' 

"It  may  have  been  a  passing  madness,  but 
the  man  felt  conquered  by  the  Presence  that 
would  not  leave  him.  He  flung  the  poison  from 
him,  and  retraced  his  steps.  The  dog  fol- 
lowed him  to  where  the  meadow  met  the  town, 
and  then  left  him.  When  the  man  reached  home, 
the  wife  and  son  were  waiting  at  the  gate,  and 
for  the  first  time  in  many  weeks  he  kissed  them 
both." 


Ii8         In  the  Service  of  the  Ring 

When  the  old  man  ceased,  there  was  silence 
for  a  little  while;  then  he  arose,  saying:  "I  am 
afraid  that  I  have  tired  you  with  all  my  talk. 
Good-bye." 


FIRESIDE  TALK 


No  recorded  memory  of  the  way  could  fail  to 
make  glad  mention  of  the  power  that  for  nearly 
twenty  years  has  made  the  hard  task  easy.  God 
gave  to  him  a  home,  and  wise  and  blessed  woman- 
hood to  make  beautiful  and  sweet  its  rich  posses- 
sion. The  kindly  critic  who  has  tried  in  vain, 
alas,  to  check  the  parson's  apostolic  failing  of  long 
preaching  by  asking  him,  "Why  did  you  preach 
two  sermons  this  morning?  Would  not  one  have 
sufficed?"  who  has  whispered,  "Tu  quoque," 
when  the  parson's  own  weakness  or  self-indulgence 
has  been  the  theme  of  his  warning  to  his  people; 
whose  gracious  hospitality  has  brought  to  many 
a  lonely  heart  the  sense  of  home,  whose  transform- 
ing touch  made  the  house  beautiful,  even  in  those 
first  meagre  days,  till  one  who  knew  said  to  her, 
"Yours  is  the  most  graceful  poverty  I  ever  saw"; 
whose  insight  read  the  meaning  and  found  the 
answer  to  many  a  problem,  in  which  the  blunter 

119 


I2O         In  tKe  Service  of  tKe  King 

senses  of  the  parson  blindly  groped;  whose  courage 
has  so  often  changed  the  hopeless  quest  to  one  of 
glad  adventure;  whose  road  song  has  made  the 
mile-posts  seem  never  very  far  apart,  even  to  tired 
feet;  who  has  somewhat  of  the  Master's  power, 
that  wondrous  gift  of  His  to  the  chosen  few,  the 
power  that  wins  the  love  of  little  children,  and 
makes  the  beggar  long  to  touch  the  garment  with 
clinging,  helpless  hand  of  trust;  who  keeps  the 
bitter  balm  of  pain  hid  like  miser's  gold,  but 
shares  the  laughter  with  a  lavish  hand ;  who  wears 
amid  the  mass  of  dark  hair  the  broad  band  of  grey 
that  came  in  a  single  day,  when  the  repeated 
wrench  of  human  loss  failed  to  bring  from  the 
set  lips  a  single  plaint,  and  God's  finger  touched 
her  brow  and  left  Its  print  upon  her  head;  who 
moves  among  her  children,  to  them  the  first  and 
best  of  earth;  who  has  reared  two  young  idolaters, 
for  Mother  is  the  religion  of  her  boys,  and  until 
the  King  vouchsafes  to  them  the  larger  vision  of 
Himself,  the  parson  is  glad  to  have  it  so;  whose 
nature  is  as  rich  in  surprises  as  when  the  parson 
used  to  thumb  the  rhyming  dictionary  as  a  boy 
in  order  to  tell  her  how  many  ways  he  loved  her. 


II 


There  is  an  Idyl  of  the  King  no  poet  yet  has 
sung.  The  story  is  the  call  of  God  to  youth. 
Amid  his  books  the  boy  hears  whisper,  clear  to  the 
inner  sense,  as  sound  of  bell  to  outer  ear  when  the 
wind  sleeps.  To  him  who  hears  within  his  soul 
the  still,  small  voice,  saying,  "Come  to  me," 
there  is  no  need  to  ask,  "Who  speaks?"  If  one 
born  inland  were  carried  in  his  sleep  to  where  the 
mighty  ocean  laps  the  shore,  and,  wakened  sudden- 
ly, should  hear  the  murmur  of  the  waves,  he  would 
not  have  to  wait  for  dawn  to  know  the  sea  is  there. 
No  man  has  ever  yet  kept  tally  of  his  pulses'  beat 
when,  suddenly  aroused,  he  stood  where  mortal 
sense  ends,  flush  with  the  infinite.  No  man  has 
told  his  vision  of  the  King  of  kings;  for  words  are 
symbols  of  familiar  things,  and  He  who  lays  the 
consecrating  hand  upon  the  head  of  youth,  is  to 
the  senses  veiled.  This  is  perhaps  the  one  great, 
wondrous  hour  of  a  disciple's  life — the  call  to 
service,  the  vision  of  the  King,  the  utter  helpless- 
ness that  clings  to  the  might  of  Him  who  is  so 

121 


122         In  tKe  Service  of  tHe  King 

near,  the  knightly  sense  of  honour  undeserved. 
There  is  no  mortal  witness  to  this  dedication  of  a 
life  untried,  undisciplined,  and  uninformed.  To 
the  knightly  soul  there  is  no  thought  of  self, 
only  the  deep  desire  to  fight  under  the  banner  of 
the  King.  He  enters  the  new  life,  eager  for  the 
struggle.  At  the  very  threshold  stands  the  temp- 
ter, so  little  like  a  form  of  evil  that  the  young 
soldier  never  harbours  for  a  moment  a  thought  of 
danger.  The  voice  is  sweet  and  gentle  as  the 
Mother's  own.  The  life  of  the  one  who  speaks  is 
but  the  gracious  sequence  of  gentle  thoughts  and 
kindly  deeds.  She  loves  the  Cause  for  which  the 
young  knight  would  fight.  She  loves  him  for  his 
devotion  to  the  Cause.  It  is  the  hand  of  misguided 
love  that  turns  the  young  soldier  from  the  way 
that  leads  to  the  shining  table-land,  where  dwells 
the  goodly  company  of  those  who  have  seen  His 
face.  The  cup  she  gives  to  him  is  mixed  with 
death;  for  she  tells  him  to  look  within  himself 
and  see  the  splendid  sacrifice  he  has  made  in  giving 
his  life  to  the  King.  He  who  listens  to  such  talk 
will  not  go  far.  When  soldiers  see  their  captain 
lead  his  horse  to  drink  before  the  charge  is  sounded, 
they  know  they  will  be  leaderless  ere  long.  The 
thirsty  horse  for  him  who  would  not  funk  the 
fight.  Oh,  ye  who  love  the  Cause,  keep  the  young 


Fireside  TalK  123 

knight  in  the  way.  If  you  must  speak,  tell  him 
that  if  he  stop  but  for  one  moment  to  look  for 
life's  reward,  the  battle  will  be  lost.  The  martyr's 
crown  covers  the  furrowed  brow,  and  hides  the 
scars  of  battle.  To  gild  this  crown  with  foolish 
words  of  praise,  and  place  it  on  the  head  of  him 
who  never  yet  has  breathed  the  dust  of  fight,  is  to 
turn  your  young  soldier  into  a  vain  and  foolish 
popinjay.  They  are  not  few  who  ' '  for  the  spangles 
wear  the  funeral  pall."  Alas,  they  are  not  few 
who  make  a  bauble  of  the  cross  and  spear. 

There  is  a  kind  of  praise  that  stunts  the  life, 
that  clogs  the  cells  of  growth,  and  keeps  men 
childish  and  fond  of  toys.  The  food  of  man  is 
truth;  and  he  who  treasures  in  his  life  the  con- 
sciousness of  duty  done,  has  furnished  his  soul  so 
that  it  feeds  from  the  roots.  One  day  the  parson 
was  in  the  office  of  a  great  physician,  and  a  mother 
brought  a  blear-eyed  child  to  be  treated  for  its 
ills.  The  physician  tested  the  vision  of  the  little 
lad,  and  his  face  was  grave.  "Doctor,  what  ails 
my  child?"  the  mother  asked.  "Your  child  has 
candy-eye,"  he  replied.  "You  have  let  him  stuff 
himself  with  sweets  till  he  has  no  desire  for  proper 
food.  The  eye  must  have  its  nourishment  like 
every  other  organ.  This  child's  eyes  are  starving ; 
his  hands  are  sticky  now."  A  score  of  times  since 


124         In  tHe  Service  of  tKe  King 

then  the  parson  has  realized  that  when  the  forms 
he  knew  as  evil  began  to  grow  dim,  and  the  colour 
of  his  thought  was  blurred,  he  had  an  attack  of 
candy-eye.  The  pilot  has  sticky  hands.  Is  it 
any  wonder  he  fails  to  read  aright  the  signal  lights? 

The  young  knight  brings  a  message  from  the 
King.  Not  yet  he  wears  visible  to  the  eyes  of 
men  the  fatal  gift  the  tempter  gave.  He  keeps 
it  hid,  but  ever  with  him.  He  comes  to  bring  a 
message.  Again  the  tempter  meets  him.  He  is 
a  herald,  and  women  praise  the  manner  of  his 
speech,  or  give  to  his  words  the  subtler  flattery 
of  tears.  The  cup  put  to  his  lips  is  deadlier  than 
Circe's  wine,  for  if  he  drink  thereof  he  thinks  him- 
self a  king,  and  henceforth  plays  with  life.  He 
struts  and  fumes  and  plays  the  king.  He  has 
forgotten  that  he  was  but  a  voice.  The  tempter's 
gift  no  longer  hid,  he  wears  abroad  as  children 
wear  a  paper  crown.  He  writes  Ich  dien  upon  his 
seal,  but  Him  he  serves  is  in  a  far-off  land,  and 
tarries  long.  When  with  the  drunkard's  doom 
his  senses  ache,  he  must  have  praise  to  still  his 
sense  of  shame.  The  yearning  for  approbation, 
to  loyalty  betraying  and  betrayed,  this  seems  the 
quest  of  God. 

But  there  are  other  tempters  on  the  road.  For 
him  who  carries  the  message  of  the  King  danger 


Fireside  TalK  125 

lurks  not  only  in  the  kindly  word  but  in  the 
kindly  deed.  Nobody  seems  ever  to  have  troubled 
to  write  the  psychology  of  gifts,  though  there  is  a 
frugal  philosophy  of  dole  compiled  as  a  protection 
against  the  prowling  mendicant.  Men  are  told 
how  a  gift  affects  the  diseased  tissue  of  the  beggar's 
brain,  but  none  has  pointed  out  the  effect  on  the 
healthy  fibre  of  a  strong  man  in  his  strength.  The 
parson  had  not  gone  far  on  the  way  till  he  found 
that  his  life  was  threatened.  Open-eyed,  he  was 
fighting  the  vanities,  and  though  worsted  often, 
still  he  knew  his  foe.  Something  else  was  sapping 
his  strength,  and  fettering  the  freedom  of  his  soul. 
He  had  found  the  poison  in  the  kindly  word  of 
praise,  but  surely  no  danger  lurked  within  the 
kindly  deed.  It  hurt  like  the  treachery  of  a 
friend  to  find  that  death  lay  hidden  in  the  offered 
gift.  As  one  who  gropes  for  the  door  in  a  room 
grown  suddenly  dark,  the  parson  searched  the 
pages  of  the  Book  for  confirmation  of  his  dread. 
He  found  that  confirmation  written  large,  though 
none  had  ever  shown  to  him  the  words  of  doom: 
"A  gift  destroyeth  the  heart";  "He  that  receiveth 
gifts  overthroweth  judgment";  "Take  not  a  gift, 
for  a  gift  doth  blind  the  eyes  of  the  wise  " ;  "  He  that 
hateth  gifts  shall  live."  What  was  he  to  do? 
Must  life  be  stripped  of  kindly  words  and  kindly 


126        In  tHe  Service  of  tKe  King 

deeds?  He  sought  the  counsel  of  older  men,  and 
in  crude  fashion  tried  to  make  them  understand. 
They  smiled  and  called  him  a  dreamer,  and 
matched  his  texts  with  other  texts ;  but  with  face 
hard  set,  the  parson  answered:  "This  may  or 
may  not  be  the  universal  law,  but  it  shall  be  law 
for  me.  My  weakness  needs  the  prop.  Praise 
shall  npt  make  me  drunk,  nor  gifts  put  out  my 
eyes."  For  many  years  the  parson  has  thought 
on  this,  and  ever  more  and  more  conviction  grows 
that  even  in  those  callow  days  he  stumbled  on 
the  truth.  God's  man  is  meant  to  be  the  voice  of 
conscience  to  the  sons  of  men,  and  human  weak- 
ness incarnate  in  the  broken  lives  of  men,  struggles 
to  still  the  voice  that  speaks.  If  praise  cannot 
seal  the  lips,  then  gifts  shall  sap  the  strength,  till 
the  voice  become  a  whisper  lost  amidst  the  shriller 
sounds  of  earth.  The  voice  of  conscience  heeded, 
leaves  the  one  who  hears  steeped  in  a  sacramental 
silence  too  deep  for  froth  of  praise.  Men  love, 
not  praise,  the  man  whose  saving  word  has  warned 
them  of  the  deep  abyss.  Why  should  the  soldier 
whine  when  the  forced  march  carries  him  past 
the  crowded  inn  where  idlers  feast?  It  is  enough 
the  town  is  saved;  and  when  he  comes  again,  the 
children  crowd  around  and  mothers  add  his  name 
to  love's  best  list,  the  ones  for  whom  they  pray. 


Ill 


One  evening  the  parson  was  taking  tea  at  the 
home  of  a  woman  whose  brilliant  mind  was  a 
recognized  asset  of  the  social  world.  She  and  the 
parson  never  met  that  she  did  not  fling  some  play- 
ful taunt  at  him.  The  taunt  was  ever  a  challenge 
to  a  battle  of  words.  The  company  was  a  merry 
one,  and  the  spirit  of  banter  was  in  the  air.  The 
parson  had  had  a  hard  week  and  was  rather  jaded. 
Suddenly,  the  hostess  turned  on  him,  and  said: 
4 'Wake  up,  Parson,  I  have  been  watching  you  for 
a  month,  you  are  going  to  pieces  in  the  extremities. 
Your  talking  finger,  as  my  brother  calls  it,  is  para- 
lyzed. You  haven't  made  it  give  point  to  a  good 
story  in  a  blue  moon.  You  know  your  favourite 
saint  has  taught  us  what  all  work  and  no  play  does 
for  a  fellow." 

"You  have  brought  it  on  your  own  head," 
replied  the  parson,  laughing,  "and  you  will 
have  to  listen  to  the  telling  of  a  story  that  has 
not  yet  been  tested  before  an  audience.  Telling 
it  to  you  now  will  be  a  sort  of  experimentum  in 

127 


128        In  tHe  Service  of  tKe  King 

mil  corpore,  which  is  priest-Latin  for  '  try  it  on  the 
dog.' 

"One  Sunday  I  preached  at  the  University, — 
or,  rather,  I  floundered  for  thirty  minutes  in  a 
mass  of  words.  I  could  not  explain  to  myself  why 
I  failed  so  utterly,  until  my  old  cook  furnished  me 
with  the  explanation  this  morning.  She  would 
have  left  me,  I  think,  if  I  had  not  got  her  a  cow; 
and  this  morning  I  went  into  the  kitchen  to  ask 
how  she  was  getting  on  with  a  patent  churn  that 
was  warranted  to  make  butter  in  five  minutes. 
I  told  her  I  would  time  her.  She  worked  it  for 
ten  minutes,  and  still  no  signs  of  butter.  Then 
she  took  a  look  into  the  churn,  and  said:  *  Tain't 
no  use  of  trying  any  longer.  Just  look  in  thar. 
The  foam  done  riz  first.  Dere  is  too  much  milk 
for  dis  size  dasher  to  handle,  and  much  milk  and 
little  dasher  makes  de  foam  rise;  and  till  you  kill 
de  foam  de  butter  won't  make.  You  is  either  got 
to  take  out  some  of  dat  milk  or  you  is  got  to  kill 
dat  foam  wid  hot  water. ' 

"I  understood  the  meaning,  then,  of  Sunday's 
failure:  'De  foam  riz  first/ 

The  parson  had  been  drawn  into  the  arena,  and 
after  his  story  the  rest  of  the  company  were  silent, 
while  he  and  the  hostess  fought  it  out.  To  the 
parson,  philosophy  was  a  code  of  spiritual  laws. 


Fireside  XalK  129 

To  her,  it  was  a  guess  more  or  less  clever  at  the 
answer  to  the  riddle  of  life.  She  used  to  say  that 
she  read  science  to  get  away  from  adjectives.  A 
volume  of  Huxley's  was  always  at  hand.  She 
mocked  at  her  scientific  and  philosophic  studies, 
and  always  spoke  of  Huxley  as  the  Grand  Vizier 
of  the  Simian  Dynasty.  It  was  the  introduction 
of  the  Grand  Vizier  into  the  talk  that  started  the 
parson  on  the  exposition  of  a  droll  bit  of  scientific 
nonsense.  He  expounded  it  with  mock  earnest- 
ness and  with  a  wealth  of  illustration. 

" Huxley, "  he  said,  "is  a  striking  illustration  of 
his  own  theory.  He  had  a  prehensile  mind.  He  is 
hanging  from  the  tree  of  life,  head  down,  half  the 
time.  His  mental  activities  are  marvellous,  though 
the  vision  he  gets  of  life  is  distorted.  The  Simian 
philosophy,  however  well  it  may  serve  as  a  working 
hypothesis  of  man's  descent,  breaks  down  hope- 
lessly in  accounting  for  woman.  Her  progress  is 
along  entirely  different  lines.  The  oldest  legend  of 
the  race  is  the  story  of  the  snake  lady,  Lilith,  who 
was  Adam's  first  wife.  Eve  was  an  afterthought." 

"That  is  a  contribution  to  Spencer's  philosophy, 
not  Huxley's,"  said  the  hostess. 

"That  is  true  enough,"  replied  the  parson,  "but 
the  merit  of  my  scheme  of  things  is  that  it  fur- 
nishes a  meeting  point  of  the  two  schools.  I  have 


130         In  tKe  Service  of  tHe  Ring 

been  working  on  my  thesis  for  years,  and  the  data 
are  unimpeachable.  When  I  was  a  youngster  I 
began  to  gather  it  at  the  women's  meetings  that 
used  to  be  held  in  my  home.  Every  woman 
talked  at  the  same  time,  and  the  woman  who 
talked  the  most  was  the  one  who  heard  most. 
The  power  of  hearing  seemed  in  some  way  to  be 
measured  by  the  use  of  speech.  My  sister,  who 
was  at  times  a  voracious  talker,  could  hear  what 
every  woman  in  the  house  was  saying,  and  repeat 
twenty  conversations  carried  on  while  she  herself 
was  talking.  To  me  it  was  an  inexplicable  pheno- 
menon, until  I  began  to  study  snakes.  The  snake's 
auditory  nerves  lie  along  the  tongue,  and  the 
tongue  must  be  put  in  violent  vibration  in  order 
for  it  to  hear.  The  faster  its  tongue  moves,  the 
better  it  hears.  The  bird,  we  know,  is  evolved 
from  a  snake.  The  suggestion  of  the  bird-nature 
of  woman  is  ever  a  part  of  the  male  consciousness; 
and  every  woman,  at  some  time  in  her  life,  is  an 
angel  to  some  man,  and  an  angel  is  a  sort  of  celestial 
bird.  Browning  calls  his  love  'half  angel  and  half 
bird,'  thus  providing  the  missing  link.  Legend, 
habit,  analogy,  the  link  of  snake  and  bird,  and 
the  instinct  of  man's  highest  moment  of  devotion, 
all  substantiate  the  theory  of  woman  belonging 
to  the  reptilia." 


Fireside  TalK  131 

"I  acknowledge  myself  vanquished,"  said  his 
antagonist,  "for  to  transform  your  enemy  into  a 
snake  is,  in  the  language  of  Scripture,  to  make 
him  bite  the  dust.  You  are  a  great  disappoint- 
ment to  me,  however,  for  I  thought  woman's 
nature  terra  incognita  to  you;  and  I  had  promised 
myself  the  pleasure  of  being  a  continual  surprise 
to  you,  but  I  find  your  knowledge  of  her  antedates 
the  record  of  creation." 

"You  little  know  how  learned  I  am  in  this  field," 
said  the  parson,  still  keeping  up  the  solemn  non- 
sense. "I  am  just  beginning  the  second  volume 
of  a  treatise  that  will,  I  think,  revolutionize  the 
world.  It  is,  I  believe,  a  new  science,  the  science 
of  feminine  psychology.  The  discovery  that  wo- 
man belonged  to  a  different  genus  from  man  has 
opened  a  new  field  of  investigation.  Every 
student  of  mental  phenomena  has  been  aware  of 
the  failure  of  psychologic  laws  to  explain  certain 
processes  of  the  feminine  mind.  The  only  plausi- 
ble explanation  heretofore  offered  is  that  of  an 
old  Danish  philosopher  who  suggests  a  difference 
in  the  polarity  of  intellect  as  the  cause.  The 
psychology  of  the  text-books,  the  laws  of  logic, 
and  the  accepted  processes  of  reasoning,  whether 
written  or  spoken,  are  all  in  accord  with  the 
recognized  dicta  of  a  masculine  psychology.  The 


132         In  tHe  Service  of  tHe  King 

most  acute  intelligences  of  the  race,  in  its  masculine 
line,  whose  success  has  been  due  to  their  knowledge 
of  man,  have  ever  been  helpless  in  the  hands  of 
some  clever  girl.  Even  the  giants  of  science  have 
been  hopelessly  mizzled,  for  Kepler  was  as  tract- 
able as  Mark  Antony  or  Lord  Nelson,  thus  proving 
that  the  very  knowledge  of  masculine  psycho- 
logy, when  applied  by  a  master  of  the  science  to 
the  working  of  the  feminine  mind,  invariably  led 
to  a  wrong  conclusion.  The  new  science  shatters 
many  idols  of  the  market  place.  The  thing  we 
have  been  calling  '  an  intuition'  in  a  woman,  turns 
out  to  be  as  truly  the  result  of  an  orderly,  psycho- 
logic process  as  the  reasoned  conclusion  of  a  man. 
The  curious  thing,  however,  is  that  woman  has 
only  two  terms  in  her  syllogism.  She  leaps  from 
generalization  to  conclusion,  unhampered  by  a 
troublesome  middle  term,  and  having  one  less 
term  for  the  mind  to  carry,  the  process  is  quicker; 
but  it  is  a  leap  in  the  dark,  and  the  chance  is 
about  even  that  she  will  be  right.  Again,  a  wo- 
man's mind  is  incapable  of  dealing  with  a  chain  of 
sequences.  A  man's  reasoning  carries  him  far 
into  the  future;  but  woman  deals  with  the  present 
alone.  The  present  wish  furnishes  the  readiest 
impulse  to  act;  hence,  woman  directs  her  per- 
suasive powers  to  the  affections  alone.  Having 


Fireside  TalK  133 

established  a  sufficiently  strong  wish,  she  is  sure 
of  the  result,  and  can  direct  it  with  unerring  skill. 
She  makes  no  appeal  to  the  reason,  for  she  knows 
instinctively  that  reason  is  her  enemy.  The  secret 
of  woman's  power  is  that  she  is  not  a  reasonable 
being  at  all.  She  is  the  enemy  and  successful 
foe  of  reason.  When  a  woman  attempts  to  reason, 
she  fights  with  man's  weapon,  and  is  comparatively 
helpless.  The  study  of  causes  is  the  highest 
sphere  of  investigation.  Of  first  causes  we  know 
nothing;  of  final  causes  we  know  very  little,  though 
Coleridge  contends  that  snuff  is  the  final  cause  of 
the  human  nose.  My  own  study  has  largely 
confined  itself  to  proximate  causes;  and  it  is 
certain  that  woman's  mastery  of  the  present,  and 
the  manner  in  which  she  deals  with  men,  have 
made  her  the  proximate  cause  of  most  of  the  great 
events  in  history,  and  at  the  same  time  have 
made  history  the  most  unreasonable  of  things." 

"You  deserve  the  fate  of  Dr.  Guillotin,"  said 
the  hostess,  "for  having  fathered  such  a  hideous 
invention  as  your  new  science.  I  dread  to  think 
of  the  royal  heads  that  will  fall  when  the  madness 
of  a  new-found  liberty  shall  take  possession  of 
enslaved  man." 

"You  both  ought  to  be  put  in  a  lunatic  asylum," 
said  one  of  the  company,  "for  when  you  two 


134         I*1  t^e  Service  of  tHe  Ring 

once  get  started  you  drive  a  four-in-hand  smash 
through  the  sacred  preserves  of  science,  history, 
and  theology. " 

The  hostess  was  evidently  smarting  under  what 
she  considered  a  fling  at  woman's  mental  processes, 
for  there  was  a  touch  of  acerbity  in  her  tones,  when 
she  continued:  "The  parson  works  himself  into 
a  fine  frenzy  of  loyalty  to  what  he  calls  truth,  and 
I  can't  make  him  see  that  he  is  devoting  himself  to 
only  the  first  of  the  fine  arts.  Truth  is  a  branch 
of  aesthetics,  and  the  world  crowns  the  great  artist 
here  as  elsewhere.  The  brilliant,  untrained  mind 
gives  to  the  world  the  plausible.  It  attracts  the 
passing  attention  of  men  much  as  she  does  a  clever 
drawing  in  a  magazine.  The  steady  plodder, 
careful  of  his  lines,  and  with  a  photographic  mind 
which  can  catch  and  reflect  that  which  it  has  seen 
at  a  particular  time  and  under  particular  con- 
ditions, suggests  a  memory  to  every  observer;  and 
men  admire,  but  weary  of,  the  probable.  He  can 
paint  a  picture  of  his  mother;  and  men  accept,  but 
tire  of,  somebody  else's  mother.  Such  men  are 
truth's  failures.  Then  comes  the  true  artist — 
the  man  who  can  paint  a  woman  who  is  the  mother; 
a  face  which  suggests  not  a  fleeting  memory,  but 
which  summons  into  life  a  presence.  But  the 
time  comes  when  the  canvas  cracks  and  the  colours 


Fireside  TalK  135 

fade.  The  picture  becomes  a  thing  to  criticize. 
The  critics  only  write  obituaries.  That  sacred 
science  of  philosophy  which  the  parson  dotes  upon, 
is  only  a  book  of  the  dead.  It  is  packed  with 
funeral  orations  over  dead  truth.  Truth  is  made 
by  man,  and  the  creature  is  as  mortal  as  its  maker. 
A  little  more  elaboration,  and  a  few  great  names 
with  which  to  conjure,  and  your  snake  philosophy 
will  be  hung  in  a  good  position  in  the  Salon  of 
Science.  It  will  hang  there,  too,  till  somebody 
gives  the  world  a  fish  philosophy,  and  reduces 
your  diversity  to  unity.  I  shall  look  forward  to 
the  great  artist  of  truth  who  shall  supersede  you." 

"His  picture  of  the  primal  fish,"  said  the  parson, 
"will  doubtless  be  a  charming  water  colour." 
Then  the  change  came  over  the  parson.  The 
soldier  had  been  sitting  with  the  crowd  around 
the  camp  fire,  jesting  of  war;  but  now  he  faced  the 
enemy.  The  soldier  was  fighting  for  his  King  and 
the  Cause.  His  talking  finger  was  busy  pressing 
home  some  argument,  like  an  old  Indian  fighter 
ramming  down  the  charge  in  his  rifle.  He  com- 
menced calmly  enough,  but  the  fierce  joy  of  the 
fight  was  in  his  eyes: 

"Your  playful  treatise  on  truth  as  a  department 
of  aesthetics,  is  the  working  creed  of  half  the  world. 
They  make  completeness,  or  prettiness,  or  utility, 


136         In  tKe  Service  of  tKe  King 

the  marks  of  truth.  The  philosopher  wants 
completeness  in  his  system;  the  artist  demands 
beauty;  the  canny  modernist,  with  an  eye  to  the 
main  chance,  demands  that  truth  pay  dividends. 
He  calls  himself  a  pragmatist  and  asks  of  truth, 
'Can  you  work?'  which  to  him  means  only,  'Will 
you  work  for  me?'  You  are  right  when  you  say 
that  the  study  of  philosophy  is  to  me  a  passion. 
I  love  philosophy,  but  philosophers  provoke  me 
to  rage  by  their  irreverence.  Truth  is  the  august 
reality  in  whose  presence  my  own  littleness  be- 
comes an  aching  agony.  Truth  is  the  reality  to 
whom  my  soul  does  homage  as  a  king's  man  to  his 
sovereign.  Reverence  is  but  a  word  that  describes 
the  behaviour  of  loyalty  in  the  presence  of  his 
king.  Reverence  becomes  service  the  moment  it 
leaves  the  audience  chamber.  The  summons 
into  that  presence  has  come  to  me  many  times. 
Sometimes  in  my  study,  while  smelting  the  ore 
of  another's  mind,  I  have  found  the  gold  of  reality, 
which  is  talisman  of  the  presence.  Sometimes  in 
a  mud  hut  on  the  mountainside,  as  I  watched  an 
unlettered  slattern  bathing  the  bloated  face  of  a 
drunken  husband,  or  gazing  with  sleepless  eyes 
at  the  sick  child  on  its  rough  bed  of  boards.  Some- 
times a  beggar's  word  opens  for  me  the  door;  and 
only  yesterday  I  heard  the  Voice  from  the  lips  of 


Fireside  TalK  137 

a  dirty  little  street  Arab,  who  was  the  under-dog 
in  a  gutter  fight.  Just  as  I  got  to  them  the  little 
chap,  whose  face  was  bleeding  and  who  was  being 
badly  beaten,  said,  between  his  sobs,  to  the  big 
boy  who  had  him  down:  'You  can  kill  me  if  you 
will,  but  you  can't  make  me  say  I  didn't  see  you 
steal  that  old  apple- woman's  money.'  I  pulled 
them  apart,  and  stood,  uncovered,  before  that 
soiled  messenger  of  the  King,  as  he  got  up  from 
the  gutter.  He  is  going  to  live  with  me,  and  I 
hope  some  day  to  prove  my  loyalty  as  truly  as 
he  did.  I  am  a  parson,  and  am  one  gladly,  will- 
ingly, passionately.  I  am  also  a  soldier  of  the 
great  Cause,  and  follow  the  details  of  the  fight  in 
other  fields  with  consuming  interest.  My  own 
feeling  as  a  private  in  the  ranks  is  very  different 
sometimes  from  that  of  the  great  leaders  of  the 
Church.  I  don't  fear  the  materialists,  for  the 
first  one  that  has  a  sick  child  betrays  the  utter 
weakness  of  his  position.  I  don't  fear,  but  wel- 
come, the  smug,  self-complacent  agnostics.  To 
me,  they  are  only  the  prim,  liveried  servants  of 
knowledge,  holding  the  door  of  the  future  open 
for  the  coming  of  the  King.  But  I  do  fear — for 
they  are  the  disloyal  ones  in  the  army  itself — 
those  idolaters  who  want  a  graven  image  of  the 
truth.  To  coin  a  word,  they  are  not  truth-seekers, 


138         In  tHe  Service  of  tKe  King 

but '  picturists,'  makers  and  worshippers  of  pictures. 
Pale  souls,  who  love  a  pictured  storm,  but  who 
have  never  known  the  joy  of  fighting  the  wind  for 
every  inch  of  leeway,  nor  the  shivering  delight 
of  dragging  the  boat  through  the  last  line  of  break- 
ers to  the  beach.  I  took,  perhaps,  a  roundabout 
way  to  a  creed,  and  I  was  startled  to  find  at  last 
that  my  revelation,  the  one  which  had  come  to  me, 
squared  with  the  life  of  the  Christ.  What  I  had 
dimly  seen  and  vaguely  hoped  for,  that  He  was. 
Truth  was  sovereign,  personal,  living,  compelling. 
I  understood  at  last  what  He  meant  when  He 
said,  '  My  Father  worketh  hitherto,  and  I  work. ' 
Pragmatism  has  given  me  the  word  I  wanted. 
Christ,  the  Worker,  Worker  with  fire,  with  sword, 
with  disease,  with  death,  counting  nothing  too 
costly  that  stands  in  the  way  to  the  end.  I  am 
persuaded  that  nothing  but  cowardice  on  the  part 
of  His  Church  keeps  back  the  sound  of  the  moving 
wheels  of  His  chariot." 

The  men  and  women  who  were  there  had  never 
seen  the  parson  so  deeply  stirred.  He  had  not 
once  raised  his  voice;  but  the  sustained  passion  of 
his  speech  made  them  wish  to  shield  their  faces 
from  the  too  heated  glow  of  the  fire  whose  warmth 
kept  them  near.  He  rose,  and  held  out  his  hand 
to  the  hostess  without  a  word.  She  took  it,  and 


Fireside  TalK  139 

turned  to  the  company,  and  said:  "You  go  too, 
I  feel  as  if  I  had  been  jesting  at  the  stars,  and  a 
mighty  meteor  had  suddenly  struck  the  earth 
beside  me,  scorching  me  as  it  passed." 


IV 


Almost  at  the  beginning  of  his  ministry,  the 
parson  began  to  be  appalled  at  the  prospect  of  the 
amount  of  sermon-making  that  lay  before  him. 
He  preached  one  hundred  and  fifty  times  a  year, 
and  he  calculated  that  if  he  were  still  in  active 
service  at  sixty-five  this  would  mean  six  thousand 
sermons  to  his  credit  or  discredit.  From  the 
condition  of  utter  mental  and  spiritual  emptiness 
on  Sunday  night,  he  felt  sure  that  the  balance 
would  be  on  the  wrong  sheet.  He  did  not  have 
the  migratory  instinct  and  did  not  believe  in  short- 
time  enlistment.  He  enlisted  for  the  war  every 
time,  and  got  his  franchise  transfer  the  day  he 
unpacked  his  books.  He  faced  the  prospect  of 
preaching  to  the  same  community  for  a  lifetime. 
How  could  it  be  done?  He  could  not  depend  on 
the  thousand  aids  to  preaching,  the  catalogues  of 
which  filled  his  waste  basket.  His  mind,  like 
his  body,  seemed  to  be  an  odd  size,  and  he  could 
no  more  clothe  his  mind  in  the  garments  of  an- 
other's thought  than  he  could  practise  economy 

140 


Fireside  TalK  141 

by  wearing  ready-made  clothing.  He  could  not 
preach  an  old  sermon,  for  the  reading  of  an  old 
manuscript  of  his  own  has  always  filled  him  with  a 
new  admiration  for  the  patient  endurance  of  his 
people  and  goaded  him  to  fresh  effort  not  to  strain 
it  to  the  breaking  point.  He  was  the  shepherd. 
He  could  not  lead  his  flock  to  the  strange  waters 
of  another's  mind,  nor  dared  he  let  them  drink 
from  the  stagnant  pools  of  his  own  memory. 
They  must  have  the  living  waters.  He  was  a 
messenger.  He  could  not  bring  some  hearsay 
tale  or  rumour  of  the  King's  will;  he  must  seek 
audience  with  the  King  Himself, — hear  Him 
speak,  and  know  the  One  whose  'will  he  must  make 
known  to  men.  To  know  the  King!  The  auda- 
city of  the  desire  frightened  him  at  first ;  but  once 
conceived,  the  desire  became  a  passion.  For 
many  an  agonizing  month  he  struggled  to  be  free. 
It  is  the  fashion  to  mock  at  dogma ;  but  dogma  was 
once  a  living  thing — the  channel  of  the  best  life 
of  men.  Like  some  encircling  vine  it  wound  itself 
about  the  Tree  of  Life,  and  to  tear  it  down  with 
ruthless  hands  meant  injury  to  that  on  which  it 
grew.  The  impulse  of  youth  was  to  use  the  axe, 
to  strip  the  mind  naked  and  bare,  and  let  the 
life-blood  of  the  faith  in  Christ  heal  the  wounds. 
There  are  always  two  ways  of  looking  at  truth. 


142         In  tKe  Service  of  tKe 

The  parson  stood  alone  one  day  in  Melrose  Abbey. 
Its  broken  arches  and  marred  walls  hurt  him  like 
the  bruises  on  the  face  of  a  friend.  While  he 
looked,  the  ancient  guardian  of  the  Abbey,  an 
old  Scot,  to  whom  every  stone  of  the  Abbey  was 
sacred,  came  towards  him.  The  parson  asked  the 
old  man:  "What  vandal  wrought  this  ruin?" 
There  was  a  glint  of  humour  in  the  eyes,  but  the 
voice  that  answered  was  solemn  enough:  "It  was 
the  work  of  John  Knox,  the  Deformer."  When- 
ever the  parson  has  felt  the  desire  to  turn  reformer, 
he  thinks  of  the  old  Scot's  answer.  He  deter- 
mined not  to  run  the  risk  of  being  a  Deformer. 
He  made  up  his  mind  to  treat  the  ancient  dogmas 
very  much  as  another  old  Scotchman  did  the  devil. 
The  preacher  who,  in  his  two  hours'  discourse,  had 
touched  all  the  great  themes  of  theology,  paused 
for  a  moment,  then  said:  "My  brethren,  we  have 
now  come  to  the  subject  of  the  devil,  whom  we  will 
face  boldly  and  pass  by."  The  parson,  intent 
upon  the  fulfilment  of  his  one  desire,  has  found  no 
time  to  go  heresy  hunting  within  the  Church,  nor 
has  he  feared  the  taunt  of  heretic  when  flung  at  him. 
He  has  read  the  volumes  wherein  men  disprove 
their  knowledge  of  the  Christ  by  the  very  tones 
in  which  they  speak.  He  has  found  amusement 
in  the  solemn  declaration  of  the  omniscient  build- 


Tireside  TalK  143 

ers  of  complete  systems.  He  has  shocked  the 
delicate  sensitiveness  of  the  trained  ear  of  his 
city  church  by  the  repetition  of  the  oft-repeated 
story  of  the  Mississippi  pilot,  who,  when  asked  by 
a  stranger  in  the  pilot  house  if  he  knew  where  all 
the  snags  were  in  the  river,  replied:  "No,  but  I 
know  where  all  the  snags  ain't.  Tain't  my  busi- 
ness to  hunt  snags. " 

How  was  he  to  know  the  Christ?  The  trans- 
lators had  again  and  again  woven  their  dogma  into 
His  words.  The  commentators  were  as  timorous 
as  the  mediaeval  schoolmen.  Fragments  of  His 
words  had  been  broken  from  their  context  and 
made  into  shibboleths.  The  parson  determined 
to  see  for  himself;  and  a  Greek  lexicon,  whose 
loose  leaves  and  torn  back  tell  the  story  of  much 
thumbing,  was  his  companion.  Never  will  he 
forget  the  joy  of  one  discovery.  Many  another, 
no  doubt,  had  seen  it,  but  had  not  passed  on  to 
him  the  precious  secret.  It  was  in  the  story  of 
the  Good  Samaritan.  The  lawyer's  answer  to  his 
own  question  the  King  accepts,  and  then  He  tells 
him  a  story.  The  parson  had  read  that  story  a 
thousand  times,  but  he  had  never  caught  but  a 
suggestion  of  its  beauty  and  its  power  till  he 
found  that  when  the  King  asked  the  lawyer  a 
question  at  the  close  of  it,  He  did  not  say  "who 


144         In  tKe  Service  of  tKe  King' 

was  neighbour  to  him  that  fell  among  thieves?" 
but  "who  became  a  neighbour ?"  That  was  the 
secret  He  came  to  tell.  God  does  not  command 
the  impossible.  You  can  love  only  your  neigh- 
bour, the  man  next  to  you.  The  Jew  read  the 
law  aright,  but  missed  the  wonder  of  it.  God's 
law  is  ever  the  revelation  of  a  principle.  You 
not  only  ought  to  love  your  neighbour,  you  are 
bound  by  the  necessity  of  your  being  to  love  your 
neighbour.  The  thing  worth  doing,  the  glory  and 
the  wonder  of  it  is,  that  you  can  get  next  to  any 
man.  Here  was  a  Samaritan  who  heard  a  cry  of 
human  need.  He  found  a  hated  Jew.  To  get 
to  him  he  had  to  break  down  the  barriers  of  racial 
hate,  of  religious  prejudice,  of  a  lifetime  of  loath- 
ing; but  he  broke  down  those  barriers  to  get  to  a 
man  in  need,  and  when  he  touched  him  his  old 
loathing  died.  He  was  next  to  him,  and  he  could 
do  no  otherwise  than  love  him.  His  beast,  his 
time,  his  money,  his  care,  he  gave  with  eager  zeal. 
This,  then,  was  Christianity,  to  smash  the  barriers 
and  get  next  to  your  fellow-man.  That  was 
man's  part;  for  the  rest,  the  instincts  of  the  soul 
of  man  could  be  trusted. 

Step  by  step  the  parson  followed,  saw  the  King 
set  His  face  to  go  to  Jerusalem  to  worship  in  the 
temple,  saw  Him  on  the  feast  day  leave  the  crowded 


Fireside  TalK  145 

street  and  take  a  route  that  led  through  the  sheep 
market.  Why  was  He  there?  No  other  Jew 
would  take  that  route  on  such  a  day,  lest  he  be 
defiled.  The  King's  way  to  the  temple  lay  through 
the  slums.  As  the  parson  saw  the  King  stop  by 
the  pool  to  touch  and  bless  the  loathsome  creature 
whose  wrecked  body  told  its  tale  of  shame,  he 
knew  the  meaning  of  the  words,  "Divine  service," 
for  which  the  Temple  itself  and  all  its  offices  are 
only  the  imperfect  symbols.  Back  to  the  begin- 
ning the  parson  went,  saw  the  Mother  and  her 
Babe,  and  stood  awed  at  the  great  God's  sweet 
remembrances  of  man;  for,  lo!  among  the  many 
rich  gifts  of  His  love  was  the  revelation  of  the 
heart  of  a  boy.  The  Mother,  like  every  other 
mother  since,  one  day  found  that  her  boy  had 
strayed  out  of  her  world.  She  found  Him  looking 
out  into  the  big  world,  and  asking  questions. 
Every  man  of  earth  has  stood  as  a  boy  just  where 
the  King  stood ;  but  who  were  those  that  gave  the 
answers  to  youth's  questionings?  The  parson 
pondered  many  an  hour  over  the  mystery  of  that 
growth  from  boyhood  to  manhood — the  long 
apprenticeship  to  toil — the  silent  years  of  Him 
who  for  thirty  years  was  the  Christ  of  the  home; 
saw  Him  at  last  break  the  bonds  of  home  and 
village  life  and  come  into  the  larger  life  of  His 

10 


146         In  tKe  Service  of  tHe  King 

people;  saw  the  son  of  Mary's  home,  the  village 
carpenter,  assume  the  highest  privilege  of  earth, — 
citizenship;  saw  Him  touch  every  phase  of  His 
nation's  life,  until  at  last  He  dared  what  none 
even  of  His  own  hardy  Galileans  had  dared  to  do — 
fling  down  the  gauntlet  to  the  corrupt  Sanhedrin, 
and  brand  their  assembly  place  as  a  den  of  thieves; 
saw  Him  stand  for  hours  in  that  place  that  the 
challenge  of  His  rights  as  a  citizen  might  be  taken 
up ;  saw  the  matchless  majesty  of  Him  who  brought 
down  certain  death  upon  His  head  in  an  attempt 
to  shame  the  leaders  of  His  people  to  a  cleansing 
of  the  highest  courts  of  the  nation.  Among  the 
many  titles  by  which  the  parson  learned  to  know 
the  King  was  that  of  the  first  citizen  of  history. 
How  He  loved  the  things  of  earth!  No  poet  ever 
sang  the  beauty  of  the  flowers  as  He  did.  He 
made  the  sparrow  itself  a  thought  of  God,  and 
from  the  mothering  instinct  of  the  fowl  He  bor- 
rowed the  symbolism  of  His  fostering  care.  The 
central  sun  for  Him  was  imagery  sublime,  but 
the  humble  lamp  of  twisted  thread  within  a  dish 
of  oil,  the  flickering  thing  that  lit  the  peasant's 
home,  had  for  Him  a  meaning  too.  No  home  so 
poor  but  that  a  gentle  spirit,  a  penny-dip,  could 
give  it  light.  The  sunlight  on  the  ripening  grain ! 
His  was  the  one  true  eye  that  saw  the  garnered 


Fireside  TalK  147 

sunshine  in  the  headed  wheat.  He  saw  and 
loved  the  white  light  of  the  harvest  field.  It  was, 
however,  His  manhood  that  thrilled  the  parson's 
soul.  When  Peter's  anxious  love  strove  to  turn 
Him  from  duty's  path,  the  matter  touched  His 
honour,  and  quick  as  the  arrow  springs  from  a 
taut  bow  His  answer  comes:  "Back,  you  devil, 
let  me  pass."  When  Herod  threatened,  and 
when  men  whispered  what  the  tyrant  meant  to  do, 
He  lifts  His  head,  and  loud  enough  for  every 
spying  ear  to  hear,  flung  back  His  answer:  "Go 
tell  that  fox  I  do  my  work  to-day."  When  in 
the  garden  the  armed  clients  of  the  High  Priest 
rushed  on  His  little  band,  He  steps  forward  into 
the  light  of  their  torches,  and  says:  "I  am  the  one 
you  seek;  let  these  men  go.  If  there  be  crime, 
'tis  Mine  alone."  Tolerant  of  every  misguided 
groping  for  the  truth,  but  hating  above  all  ugly 
things  the  whited  lie.  The  Lord  of  Earth  and 
Heaven,  touching  the  lives  of  lowly  peasants, 
hopeless  outcasts,  and  proud  pedants,  but  never 
in  any  mood  one  single  touch  of  patronage.  Wise 
above  the  measure  of  the  race,  but  speaking  ever 
in  simple  speech.  Lifting  the  little  children  where 
they  could  see  at  work  the  mighty  enginery  of 
eternity,  and  explaining  as  a  father  to  his  child 
how  the  weaving  of  the  web  of  life  is  wrought. 


148        In  the  Service  of  the  King 

The  parson  had  studied  what  the  theorists  call 
"the  method  of  uplift,"  with  its  gospel  of  thrift, 
and  its  devil  whisper  that  knowledge  is  power, 
motives  that  leave  the  soul  untouched  and  only 
make  effective  the  selfish  instinct  of  the  race.  It 
was  an  increasing  joy  to  study  the  King's  way. 
Ever  the  human  touch  that  dignified  and  ennobled. 
Ever  the  appeal  to  the  latent  gift  of  daring  that  is 
in  every  man.  He  offers  Matthew  the  opportu- 
nity of  walking  with  Him  in  the  open  life  of  day, 
and  the  man  who  had  sold  all  for  money  shuts  his 
ledger  and  closes  his  office  in  the  rush  hour  of 
business.  He  offers  the  restless  brothers  the  cup 
of  agony  and  the  baptism  of  fire  when  they  come 
begging  for  place  and  power,  and  henceforth  they 
are  knit  to  him  with  hooks  of  steel.  He  meets 
the  Magdalene,  and  instead  of  sermons,  gives 
her  a  place  near  His  mother.  He  goes  as  a  self- 
invited  guest  to  Zaccheus'  home  and  henceforth 
an  honest  gentleman  is  master  of  the  house  where 
once  lived  only  a  rich  publican. 

Sometimes  the  reckless  courage  of  the  Galilean 
made  the  parson's  breath  come  quick.  Five 
thousand  of  the  stoutest  of  the  Jewish  race  threat- 
ened to  take  Him  by  force  and  make  Him  a  King. 
He  retires  across  the  lake,  and  when  they  follow 
Him  He  tells  them  the  terms  on  which  alone  He 


Fireside  TalK  149 

will  be  their  leader:  "I  am  going  to  give  my  flesh 
for  the  life  of  the  world.  If  you  will  do  the  same, 
then  come  with  me.  Not  for  Galilee  alone,  nor 
for  Israel  do  I  fight,  but  for  the  world.  Will  you 
follow?"  The  crowd  fell  away  and  only  the  awed 
and  hesitating  twelve  were  left.  He  faces  them. 
"Do  you  not  also  want  to  go?  Remember  the 
conditions."  He  was  ready  to  go  on  alone,  if  need 
be.  Those  who  followed  must  have  no  doubt  as 
to  the  meaning  of  the  Cause  for  which  he 
fought. 

All  along  the  parson  knew  that  he  was  learning 
to  know  the  King  better  day  by  day,  but  knew 
also  that  there  were  depths  his  littleness  could 
not  sound.  He  could  watch  Matthew  bringing 
his  clerkly  skill  to  the  effort  of  giving  an  orderly 
recital  of  the  activities  of  that  life  that  touched 
the  changing  life  of  man  as  the  sunlight  plays 
upon  the  moving  leaves,  and  he  has  smiled  when 
the  critics  disputed  about  the  chronology  of  some 
act  or  utterance.  The  eifort  to  be  the  exact 
chronicler  of  such  a  life  was  a  task  as  futile  as  for 
a  man  to  try  to  chronicle  his  mother's  myriad 
services  of  love.  He  has  pictured  the  alien  Luke 
during  those  two  years  he  lived  with  Paul  at 
Caesarea,  searching  the  villages  and  countrysides 
for  those  whose  privilege  it  had  been  to  see  and 


150        In  tHe  Service  of  tHe 

hear  the  King,  cross-questioning  the  man  who 
once,  at  the  approach  of  his  fellow-man,  called 
out,  " Unclean,  unclean,"  until  the  King  heard  that 
cry,  and  came  to  it.  Luke  knew  what  it  was  to  be 
a  despised  alien.  Was  it  from  one  of  a  hated  race 
that  he  got  that  story  of  the  good  Samaritan? 
Who  was  the  prodigal  in  whose  heart  had  lived 
through  all  the  separating  years  that  story  of  the 
younger  son?  To  Luke  more  than  to  the  other 
chroniclers  of  The  Life  appealed  the  picture  of  the 
King  at  prayer.  It  was  the  alien  recorder  of  the 
King's  life  that  has  given  us  the  kneeling  Christ. 
The  empty  pagan  years  of  his  prayerless  life  had 
taught  him  to  prize  the  oasis  hour  of  day  when 
man  drinks  at  the  fount  of  God.  In  the  intimate 
story  of  John,  the  parson  learned  how  the  King 
spoke  to  the  understanding  ear  of  friend.  Such 
speech  could  find  its  way  to  written  record  only 
after  the  testing  years  had  trained  the  brooding 
heart  of  him  who  loved,  to  sense  the  finer  issues 
that  the  others  had  missed.  It  was  with  consum- 
ing interest  that  the  parson  followed  Paul  in  that 
learner's  effort  to  appropriate  the  Christ.  The 
knowing  ones  of  the  critical  school  tell  us  that  Paul 
is  the  founder  of  Christianity;  that  he  was  fur- 
nished a  system  of  ethics  and  created  for  the 
Church  a  system  of  theology.  To  the  parson 


Fireside  TalK  151 

such  words  are  meaningless.  Day  by  day  the 
Tarsian  Jew  tested  some  hitherto  unused  lesson 
of  the  King's  life,  and  power  that  was  a  living 
presence  touched  his  life.  He  died  learning,  and 
the  record  of  his  desire  to  know  Jesus  is  next  to 
The  Life  itself,  the  most  precious  heritage  of  the 
race.  He  left  us  the  secret  of  his  method:  if  a 
man  would  learn  Christ  he  must  first  know  the 
truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus.  Ever  since  the  parson 
was  a  little  boy  the  poet  has  been  his  prophet. 
He  has  never  quite  got  over  the  habit  of  turning 
the  pages  of  a  new  book  in  search  of  scraps  of 
poetry,  taking  these  first  as  the  child  plucks  the 
raisins  from  his  cake.  It  was  an  added  joy,  then, 
to  find  a  poet  among  those  who  knew  Him  here 
on  earth.  Peter  had  the  gift  of  eloquent  speech, 
but  in  his  letters  the  poet  shows  himself.  The 
parson  tried  again  and  again  to  make  his  own  in 
English  speech  the  beauty  of  Peter's  words.  The 
spirit  he  believes  he  has  caught,  but  that  illusive 
something  that  marks  the  poet's  hand  is  lost. 
Thus  Peter  sings  the  making  of  a  Christian  gentle- 
man: Have  a  love  that  reaches  out  to  lift  the 
fallen  ones,  and  throw  the  mantle  of  that  love 
about  the  sin-soiled  ones,  and  take  them  home 
with  you,  nor  think  yourself  ill-used  with  such 
for  guests.  As  each  one  has  received  a  home,  the 


152         In  tKe  Service  of  tKe  King 

gift  of  God,  so  let  him  use  it  as  a  beautiful  almoner 
of  the  many  coloured  kindness  of  the  Lord. 

When  the  parson  was  a  boy  at  school  he  counted 
himself  lucky  if  it  came  to  him  to  translate  that 
portion  of  the  Anabasis  which  described  the  army 
of  Cyrus  on  the  march.  Xenophon  always  re- 
peated the  same  formula:  "Cyrus  marched  so 
many  parasangs,  so  many  days'  journey,  etc/' 
In  fact,  the  teacher  used  to  say  that  when  Cyrus 
marched  the  class  marched,  but  always  halted 
with  the  army.  One  day  the  boy  had  no  desire 
to  halt,  for  he  found  a  story  that  has  lived  in  his 
brain  ever  since.  Cyrus  is  riding  ahead  of  his 
army  and  looking  back  finds  that  the  line  has 
halted.  He  returns,  and  sees  the  wagon  train 
stalled  in  the  mud.  Standing  well  back  are  the 
rich,  young  Persian  nobles  watching  the  struggling 
horses  and  guarding  their  silken  robes  from  being 
spattered  by  the  mud.  Cyrus  looks  first  at  the 
helpless  teams,  and  then  at  these  silk-clad  soldiers. 
His  anger  finds  voice  at  last:  "You  lordly  sons  of 
Persia,  you  offered  to  go  with  me  into  the  East,  and 
help  me  win  a  kingdom,  and  here  you  stand  guard- 
ing your  silken  dress  and  tinsel  trappings  while  my 
army  waits.  Fling  off  those  flowing  robes  that  clog 
your  hands  and  feet.  Into  the  mud  with  you, 
every  one,  or  turn  your  traitor  faces  to  the  West." 


Tireside  TalK  153 

In  the  East  the  servant's  loose  cape  was  fur- 
nished with  a  girdle,  which,  when  tied,  left  the 
hands  and  feet  free.  This  cape  was  called,  in 
common  speech,  a  "tie-up."  It  brought  a  thrill 
to  the  parson  like  that  he  had  when  he  read  of  the 
anger  of  the  warrior  prince,  to  hear  Peter  say, 
"If  you  would  be  really  free  to  serve,  put  on  your 
tie-up  and  help." 

When  will  the  Christian  Church,  with  daring 
greater  than  had  any  of  those  early  teachers  save 
Stephen,  give  to  the  King  His  chosen  title  of  Son 
of  Man?  The  truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus!  Paul  tells 
us  that  such  knowledge  gives  to  the  old  man  the 
heart  of  a  boy  again.  The  parson  had  studied  the 
office  and  function  of  the  Christ  in  the  books,  but 
it  was  a  book-Christ  he  knew  at  best.  The  study 
of  the  life  of  Jesus  took  him  where  he  saw  the 
hopes  and  needs  of  all  the  race  converge.  He  saw 
them  meet  and  be  fulfilled ;  and  while  he  looked  the 
Son  of  Man,  who  is  the  promise  of  the  race,  was 
crowned  in  his  heart  the  Son  of  God.  Nor  since 
that  day  has  it  ever  been  aught  but  a  splendid 
privilege,  in  any  company,  whether  of  abjects  or 
of  jeering  worldlings,  to  bear  witness  on  bended 
knee  or  with  uplifted  head  to  his  allegiance  to  the 
Lord  of  Life. 

One  day  there  came  to  the  parson's  study  a  man 


154         In  tHe  Service  of  tKe   King 

whom  he  had  known  in  the  hunting  field  and  in 
the  home.  He  took  his  seat,  and  plunged  straight 
into  his  story  : 

"Parson,  I  want  your  help.  The  ties  that 
bind  me  to  home  must  soon  be  broken.  Only 
one  is  left,  and  she  is  near  the  end  of  life.  I 
have  been  wondering  what  will  then  become  of 
me.  I  have  tried  it  all — dissipation  till  it  palled; 
adventure  till  I  became  almost  as  wild  as  the 
things  I  hunted.  The  things  with  which  men  try 
to  kill  the  restlessness  are  stale.  I  have  fought 
with  beasts  and  men,  and  learned  to  master  both. 
Desire  seems  dead  in  me,  save  the  maddening 
itch  to  be  forever  on  the  move.  The  Wanderlust 
is  all  that  is  left.  I  have  no  goal  and  seek  nothing. ' ' 

"No  chart,  no  haven,  and  no  pilot?"  said  the 
parson.  "The  end  seems  pretty  well  assured. 
It's  either  a  wreck  or  a  derelict/' 

"That's  just  the  way  I  figured  it  out,"  he  re- 
plied. "You  have  used  the  very  word — 'a  dere- 
lict. '  There  is  enough  of  manhood  left  in  me  to 
hate  that  thought.  That  is  why  I  came  to  you.  I 
have  been  watching  you  for  years,  and  you  seem 
to  know  what  you  are  headed  for;  so  I  came  to 
get  a  chart." 

"Well,"  replied  the  parson,  "you  know  what  I 
am — a  minister  of  Christ." 


Fireside  TalK  155 

"Oh,  cut  out  that  sort  of  talk,"  he  broke  in. 
"Don't  ask  me  if  I  believe  in  Christ.  The  ques- 
tion has  no  meaning  to  me.  If  you  produce  the 
evidence  and  prove  your  case  I  will  assent.  It's 
to  me  only  a  historical  question,  and  I  believe  in 
Julius  Caesar  on  the  same  grounds.  Please  don't 
try  any  conjure  words  on  me.  Except  for  a  fu- 
neral service  I  haven't  been  in  a  church  for  twenty 
years,  and  the  whole  business  is  absolutely  mean- 
ingless to  me." 

I  hardly  know  where  to  begin,"  said  the  parson, 
"if  you  don't  believe  in  anything,  there  doesn't 
seem  to  be  a  starting  point." 

"But  I  do  believe  in  something,"  answered  the 
man.  "I  believe  in  you — that's  why  I'm  here." 

These  unexpected  words  haunted  the  parson 
for  many  a  day.  That  night  he  awoke  trembling, 
with  the  words  still  ringing  in  his  ears:  "I  do 
believe  in  something, — I  believe  in  you."  "But 
you  don't  understand,"  answered  the  parson, 
"what  it  means  when  you  say  you  believe  in  me, 
and  ask  for  a  chart.  I  don't  know  the  way  any 
better  than  you  do.  I  am  like  a  man  in  the  engine 
room.  The  pilot  runs  the  ship.  My  one  duty 
is  to  obey  the  signals.  When  he  says,  '  Full  speed 
ahead,'  I  pull  the  throttle;  and  when  he  signals, 
'Stop,'  I  choke  the  steam." 


156         In  tHe  Service  of  tHe  King 

The  parson  laid  his  hand  on  his  friend* s  shoulder, 
and  asked:  "Will  you  kneel  here  by  me  and  let 
me  pray  God  to  guide  us?" 

"  No,"  said  the  man,  "this  is  too  serious  a  business 
for  me  to  tolerate  any  mummery.  Of  all  the  non- 
sense you  preachers  talk,  prayer  seems  to  me  to 
be  the  greatest.  I  can  think  of  nothing  more 
foolish  than  a  man  crouching  by  his  bed  and 
mumbling  a  few  words,  and  then  getting  up  with 
the  thought  that  something  is  going  to  come  to 
pass  because  he  has  said  a  few  words.  The  whole 
thing  is  a  superstition,  too  foolish  to  discuss 
seriously." 

"See  here,"  said  the  parson,  "answer  me. 
You  have  been  a  soldier,  and  you  have  had  men 
under  you  at  other  times.  Tell  me,  did  you  ever 
face  the  situation  where  the  lives  of  helpless  men 
and  women  depended  on  you  and  those  under  you 
facing  danger,  and  when  the  crisis  came  they 
failed  you?" 

"More  than  once,"  he  answered. 

"What  did  you  do?"  asked  the  parson. 

"There  wasn't  but  one  thing  to  do,"  he  replied. 
"I  asked  them  if  they  were  men  or  lily-livered 
cowards,  and  told  them  they  might  save  their  skins 
if  they  wanted  to,  but  I  was  going  to  do  my 
duty." 


Fireside  TalK  157 

"What  happened  then?"  asked  the  parson. 

"Oh,  they  followed  me.  A  man  with  a  drop 
of  red  blood  in  him  couldn't  swallow  that  talk." 

"Could  you  have  driven  them  in  at  the  point 
of  a  pistol?"  asked  the  parson. 

"Not  a  foot,"  he  answered. 

"Well,  then,  what  made  them  go  in?"  persisted 
the  parson.  "Surely  there  was  something  that 
worked  the  change.  One  minute  they  were  the 
lowest  order  of  human  life — cowards;  the  next, 
they  were  ready  to  die  with  you.  Something 
changed  them.  What  was  it?" 

"If  you  put  it  that  way,  I  suppose  I  did  it,"  he 
answered. 

' '  I  have  no  doubt  of  it , "  said  the  parson.  ' '  Now 
if  you  can  work  a  change  like  that,  don't  you 
think  it  a  little  impertinent  to  ridicule  the  idea 
of  the  great  God  of  the  universe  doing  for  you 
something  of  the  same  sort  of  thing  that  you  did 
for  those  men  ?  " 

For  a  moment  the  man  looked  dazed;  then  his 
eyes  flashed.  "By  Heaven,  I  see  it!  You  are 
talking  about  prayer.  Why  the  thing  isn't  non- 
sense at  all.  Of  course  He  can  do  it.  Man,  why 
didn't  you  come  and  tell  me  about  it  long  ago? 
Why,  the  thing  proves  itself.  Yes,  you  can  pray 
for  me.  I'll  pray  for  myself.  We've  got  a  start- 


158        In  tKe  Service  of  tKe  King 

ing  point  now.     Go  on,  and  tell  me  something 
about  your  Pilot." 

For  hours  they  sat  and  talked,  and  when  he 
held  out  his  hand  in  parting,  he  said:  "Don't 
bother  about  me,  Parson.  I'll  get  the  Book  and 
learn  the  Pilot's  signals.  I  know  what  it  is  to 
obey,  and  I  promise  to  follow  instructions.  I 
don't  know  yet  the  port  I'm  making  for,  but  I'm 
beginning  to  trust  the  Pilot,  and  I  shall  not  be  a 
derelict.  Be  sure  of  that." 


Jl  Selection  from  the 
Catalogue  of 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 


Complete  Catalogue  sent 
on  application 


Knowledge  and  Life 

By  Rudolf  Eucken 

Author  of  "The  Truth  of  Religion,"  "The  Life 
of  the  Spirit " 


Crown  Theological  Library.     12°.    $1.50 

Through  his  sustained  and  heroic  appeal  to 
what  is  most  spiritual  in  man,  Eucken  has 
ennobled  the  significance  and  the  mission  of 
philosophy.  He  aims  at  developing,  not  a  new 
category  but  a  new  culture,  and  holds  that  it 
is  the  privilege  of  philosophy,  by  penetrating 
to  what  is  most  inward  in  human  nature,  to 
bring  a  religious  inspiration  to  bear  upon  the 
problems  of  the  world  of  human  labor.  Euck- 
en's  philosophy  is  a  philosophy  of  life.  It  is 
a  philosophy  of  reality  as  well.  It  treats  of 
the  sources  of  man's  strength,  and  the  meaning 
and  purpose  of  his  spiritual  endeavor.  And 
can  there  be  anything  more  real  than  the 
activity  of  a  life  that  has  consciously  realized 
the  true  sources  of  its  power  and  the  goal  of 
its  ultimate  aspirations? 

G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


PERSONALITY 

By  F.  B.  JEVONS,  LittD. 

Author  of 

"The  Idea  of  God,"  "Comparative 
Religions,"  etc. 

72°.     $1.00  net 

This  work  deals  with  the  problem 
of  personality,  especially  as  raised  by 
William  James  and  M.  Bergson.  If  a 
man  imagines  himself  bound,  in  defer- 
ence to  science  or  psychology,  to  deny 
the  existence  of  personality,  he  commits 
himself  to  saying  "  I  do  not  exist."  If 
he  shrinks  from  that  absurdity,  he  must 
accept  personality  as  a  reality :  a  person 
is  both  a  subject  who  knows  others  and 
an  object  of  others'  knowledge.  The 
bond,  however,  which  holds  persons, 
human  and  divine,  together,  cannot  be 
merely  intellectual:  it  must  be  emotional 
as  well  as  intellectual — the  bond  of  love. 

G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


The 
Science  of  Happiness 

By  Jean  Finot 

Author  of  "  Problem  of  the  Sexes,"  etc. 
Translated  from  the  French  by 

Mary  J.  Safford 

8°.    $1.75  net 

The  author  considers  a  subject,  the  solution  of 
which  offers  more  enticement  to  the  well-wisher 
of  the  race  than  the  gold  of  the  Incas  did  to  the 
treasure-seekers  of  Spain,  who  themselves  doubt- 
less looked  upon  the  coveted  yellow  metal, 
however  mistakenly,  as  a  key  to  the  happiness 
which  all  are  trying  to  find.  "  Amid  the  noisy 
tumult  of  life,  amid  the  dissonance  that  divides 
man  from  man,"  remarks  M.  Finot,  "the 
Science  of  Happiness  tries  to  discover  the 
divine  link  which  binds  humanity  to  happi- 
ness through  the  soul  and  through  the  union 
of  souls."  The  author  considers  the  nature 
of  happiness  and  the  means  of  its  attainment, 
as  well  as  many  allied  questions. 


New  York 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 


London 


Talks  in  a   Library 

with 

Laurence  Mutton 

Recorded  by  ISABEL  MOORE 

Octavo,  475  pages.     With  Portraits  and  65  other 
Illustrations 

Net,  $2.50.     Postage  Extra 

Mr.  Button  was  one  of  the  kindliest  and  most  genial  of 
men,  and  drew  to  himself  a  host  of  friends — players, 
writers,  artists,  and  well-known  men  in  every  walk  of  life. 
Further  than  this,  Mr.  Button  possessed  a  fascinating 
collection  of  portraits,  autograph  letters,  inscribed  books, 
play-bills,  and  other  literary  and  artistic  bric-a-brac.  It 
was  in  the  room  containing  this  collection  that  Mr.  Button 
talked  with  Mrs.  Moore.  Browsing  among  his  treasures, 
he  would  pick  up  here  a  book,  and  there  a  portrait  or 
autograph  letter,  and  as  the  object  brought  to  his  remem- 
brance the  personality  associated  with  it,  he  would  have 
something  to  say  concerning  the  personality  and  the 
occasion.  Nothing  could  be  more  spontaneous  and  less 
artificial  than  this  record  of  talks  with  such  a  charming  host. 

It  may  be  added  that  the  manuscript  was  revised  by 
Dr.  Button  before  his  last  illness,  and  the  volume  stands, 
therefore,  as  his  final  word  to  his  friends  and  to  the  public. 

G*  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  ?^  date  stamped  below,  or 


10Jan'63fiW 


LD  21A-40m-ll/63 
(El602slO)476B 


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University  of  California 

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